Lord Triesman: My Lords, I am entirely confident that the Brazilian Government have taken the most serious and responsible view. There is no question that everyone works in close co-operation on this. I am able to give that assurance because every part of the dialogue—not least during President Lula's successful visit to this country—was plainly focused on exactly the issues that have concerned the House today.

Lord Triesman: My Lords, I do not know whether it will get off the ground, but let me make it clear that the Government do not support or promote the purchase of the Amazon rainforest. We are working with the Brazilian Government, who have taken a wholly responsible view of it. I can do no better than to repeat the words of my right honourable friend David Miliband in the discussions in Mexico, when he said that we did not,
	"support or promote the purchase of the Amazon forest"—
	but that we would,
	"work with Brazilian colleagues... to support sustainable forestry management.
	It is far better to do it in partnership with a serious Government with serious objectives.

Lord Adonis: My Lords, the better the support that is available to children in care, both to prevent them going into care in the first place and to tackle issues such as the poor standard of education which children in care experience at present, the more likely we are to keep them out of the custody system—a measure which I am sure the right reverend Prelate supports. A whole section of the Green Paper, which was published last week, concerns how we better support children in care who end up in custody and are very liable to reoffend and not get the provision that they need when they leave custody. We hope that those measures will also improve that situation.

Lord Warner: My Lords, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has done a very thoroughjob on this difficult appraisal. It would be entirely inappropriate for the Government to second-guess NICE's conclusions, though I know that many people will find them disappointing. The final appraisal guidance will be published next month alongside a clinical guideline on dementia, to make clear what care and support should be provided to people at all stages of Alzheimer's disease.

Lord Judd: My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 2 and strongly support Amendment No. 7, standing in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley.
	In one sense, the purpose of the amendment is to emulate the example of legislators north of the Border in Scotland. They have seen fit to put on the face of their legislation, as the cornerstone of everything they want to achieve, the principle of the right of every child to education. I should declare an interest at this point, because I am a half-Scot and sometimes my English half wishes that we had the courage of Scots conviction. With the greatest possible respect to the Minister, I believe that he should again look at this point before he finally makes up his mind.
	The Minister listens very carefully to arguments—he is almost exemplary in how this should be done—and he is extremely courteous and thorough in following up points. We approached and discussed this issue in Committee, and I deeply appreciate the full letter that he has sent to me about the concerns behind my amendment. I am sure that it was no fault of the department, but I am afraid that the Minister's letter did not reach me in time to have meetings with his officials before this discussion. However, because I take his letter seriously, I should like to examine some of the points that he makes in it.
	He emphasises that the right to education is guaranteed by Article 2 of the first protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights and, for children, by Article 28 of the European Convention on the Rights of the Child. The right to education, he argues, is provided by the European convention and is already part of national law by virtue of the Human Rights Act 1998. We recognised that when we argued our case in Committee.
	I do not believe that anyone could be a more committed internationalist than I am. I am glad that the conventions say what they do and I am proud of the part that Britain played in leading the cause in making those conventions. However, internationalist though I am and seriously though I take the conventions, at a time when we are determined to make a success of our education system—the Minister is second to no one in that respect—and when we are also debating other dimensions, such as the importance of emphasising what it is to be British, what makes the British character and what is important about Britain, I believe it is important that we do not approach education simply by saying, "Ah, we now have commitments under certain international conventions and the right is established under those conventions". We must make it clear that in our own approach within the United Kingdom to these matters we take the right to education of every child as absolutely central to everything that we do. For that reason, I believe that the Scots were right and I wish that we would follow their example.
	The Minister argued that, because the objective is spelt out in the Human Rights Act 1998, the amendment would confuse the issue as it would not be clear whether the Human Rights Act or this Bill prevailed. I do not think that there is any problem in that respect. As I understand it, it is absolutely clear that ultimately the European Convention on Human Rights prevails in all aspects of legislation and activity in this country.
	My noble friend also goes on to emphasise the importance of the judgment by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bingham, in the Ali case, when he upheld what has been described as the fourfold foundation for this right. The Minister very kindly spells out again in his letter to me what the fourfold commitment amounts to. The first element is the duty of parents under Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 to cause their children to receive efficient and suitable full-time education, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise. That is a great objective and a great principle. But what happens if the parents do not share that commitment or do not fulfil it?
	The second element is the Secretary of State's duty under Section 10 of the Education Act 1996 to promote the education of the people of England and Wales. Again, that is absolutely salutary. That is great, but that is not an objective that automatically becomes fulfilled. To promote the importance of it is not actually ensuring that it happens.
	The third element is that local education authorities are required by Section 13 of that Act to secure that efficient education is available to meet the needs of the population of their areas. Such education being available is not ensuring that every child enjoys it. The fourth element is that maintained schools themselves have a responsibility to ensure that their governing bodies conduct the schools with a view to promoting high standards of educational achievement at the schools. Again, that is excellent but it does not ensure that every child is able to enjoy that provision.
	On Report, we are proposing, in a slightly different form, that, because of the residual overall responsibility of local education authorities, it should be made quite clear that those authorities have a responsibility to secure the right to education for every child. We then go on to demonstrate how that should be done. Part 1 of the Bill talks about the responsibilities of local education authorities. For local education authorities in England it is about promoting high standards, ensuring fair access to educational opportunity and promoting the fulfilment by every child concerned of its educational potential. Those are all absolutely first-class principles—none of us would question them—but not one of them ensures that that right is being enjoyed. With great respect to my noble friend, we spell out in the amendment the fact that local educational authorities have a responsibility to secure the rights spelt out in the convention—we are not now insisting that it is established as a right in the introduction to the Bill, but we want to establish the right that the Government themselves argue is established in the convention.
	I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, with all her experience and all her usual commitment and analytical power, will put forward a powerful argument to this set of amendments. A mistake that all of us in Parliament sometimes make is to think that the battle has been won when we have introduced legislation. We have seldom won the battle; at best, we have usually created opportunities. What wins the battle is winning the hearts, minds, commitment and understanding of the widest possible cross-section of people to the principles that we are trying to achieve by education and by enthusing the population as a whole with an objective that is worth while achieving.
	I ask my noble friend to say that a responsibility and a right are spelt out in international conventions, but we, for a host of convoluted reasons, do not think it is appropriate to spell out that right in the Bill as the cornerstone and presentation of all else we are doing. I think that is sad. With the greatest possible respect to all concerned, I think it is institutional Whitehall getting caught up in the niceties and missing an opportunity to take the nation forward.
	In his letter to me, the Minister emphasised—and he was generous to do it so strongly—that if there are doubts about legal problems that might be opened up by such a declaration, one can look at Scotland where no single parent has tried to introduce any complaint or criticism on the grounds of that declaratory principle in the Bill. That is very significant. He says:
	"As regards the risks of changing the meaning of the existing right to education"—
	which he has gone into in some detail in his letter—
	"the Scottish Executive took the view that the declaratory benefits were worth the risk of legal challenge. This is not a view that, on serious reflection, we share".
	I beg the Minister to indicate in his reply that he and his officials will go away and think about this. I am a very open-minded sort of chap, and if he can come back to the House—or indicate that he is prepared to do so—with some wording that gets this principle flying as a standard at the head of all we are trying to do on education and, with the legal advice that has so far been holding him back from endorsing our amendment, expresses in a watertight way what we enthusiastically propose, I shall be greatly encouraged. I beg to move.

Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments Nos. 55 and 56, which are grouped with those of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. These amendments highlight the fact that educational and wellbeing outcomes are closely linked and must be made mutually reinforcing in the Bill. They would ensure that the Bill and the role of the governing body it outlines work towards improving all five well-being outcomes for children as set out in the Children Act 2004 as other partners in children's services are required to do. The importance of education in supporting the wider outcomes of that Act is also stressed.
	We want the Bill to ensure that schools help to deliver improvement on all five well-being outcomes for children. Local authorities have embraced the provisions in the Children Act 2004 that create integrated children's services and give them a duty to improve outcomes for all children. More than 130 now have directors of children's services, and all over the country authorities are developing children's trusts to deliver better, more integrated services for children. The development of those integrated services is being reflected in inspection methodology through joint area reviews. The current schools inspection framework, introduced last year, and the creation of the single inspectorate in this Bill are movement in the same direction. If that approach is to be embedded within all children's services, the Bill needs to support the Children Act 2004 and to reflect in schools the joined-up approach being taken at local level.
	Through S.I. 2149/2005 and government guidance there is a clear onus on local authorities to ensure that schools are consulted and have full input to developing wellbeing outcomes locally. At present, however, that onus is only in one direction. Given schools' obvious importance in delivering the educational fulfilment and wider elements of wellbeing for children, the onus on governing bodies to promote wellbeing must be strengthened to ensure coherent and effective local delivery for children and young people. We tried to persuade the Government of that in 2004 but did not succeed, so I am trying again today.
	When amendments on Every Child Matters were moved in Committee, the Government countered that the Children Act 2004 was sufficient to ensure schools' co-operation in its delivery. I dispute that. Certainly, some schools are working well with other partners to ensure delivery of wider wellbeing outcomes, yet others are not and do not see matters beyond educational attainment as related and part of their core business in children's development. Indeed, the more independent schools become, the more difficult it will be to keep wellbeing at the heart of all their activity unless there is a clear duty.
	The Bill should therefore complement and provide coherence by including provisions to ensure that education outcomes reinforce wellbeing outcomes and vice versa, for they are inextricably linked. The amendment is well supported by many organisations in the Every Child, Every School coalition.
	In Committee, there was considerable support for this point of view across your Lordships' House. The noble Lord, Lord Dearing, said:
	"The purpose of our amendment is formally to underlinethat the Every Child Matters agenda, as set out in the Children Act 2004, is directly relevant to the educational attainment of every child, and that the educational purposes of the Bill will not be fully achieved unless the agenda is part of its provisions".—[Official Report, 5/7/06; col. 269.]
	The noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, said :
	"We really will not get higher standards in our schools unless we focus on wider issues of welfare and well-being".—[Official Report, 5/7/06; col. 272.]
	The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, pointed out that,
	"the law does not need changing to achieve those objectives; it achieves them already".—[Official Report, 5/7/06; col. 274.]
	However, practitioners tell me that unless we have a clear duty, that will not always happen. It already happens in many cases and I am sure it will continue to do so. But this Bill is about putting clear duties on people. I believe that the law does not make it clear if it excludes schools. Let us rectify that today.

Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments Nos. 12, to 15, in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Walmsley. This series of amendments is almost, but not quite, on the opposite track to that proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe. The Government propose that, other things being equal, all new schools should be foundation schools. The noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, suggests not only that all new schools should be foundation schools but that there should be positive encouragement for all existing schools to become foundation schools.
	We argue somewhat differently. Our amendments propose that, in the competition for new schools, there should be even terms between foundation schools and community schools. What is the difference between foundation schools and community schools? Both are financed via the dedicated schools budget, which comes through the local education authority and is paid for partly by government grants and partly by local taxes. But the foundation school owns its own buildings, has control over its own budget and runs its own affairs. It is, as the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, said, an independent state school. The community school, via local management of schools, manages around 93 per cent of its budget, but the local education authority owns its buildings, employs its staff and appoints its governors, who are responsible for its overall running.
	The key issue is the link to the local education authority and how far the school can act wholly independently of that authority. As the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, stressed, the notion of foundation schools, deriving from the Conservative proposals for grant maintained schools, is that state schools should be independent of local education authorities. We believe that the link with local education authorities is beneficial, because we see education provision as a system whose parts—nursery schools, Sure Start centres, schools and colleges—are interdependent at community level and need some overarching control system at that level: the local education authority. Schools and colleges are there to serve the local education authority. The community helps to pay for them, so it is right that the community should have some say in how they are run and that there should be some accountability, through the governance process, to the community.
	I talked about foundation schools being derived from grant-maintained schools, but the idea goes back considerably further, because the concept of the grant-maintained school was derived from voluntary-aided and voluntary-controlled schools, which are the church schools. That was part of the deal done with the churches at the end of the 19th century and, particularly, as enshrined in the Education Act 1944. While the state would meet all the current expense of such schools, the church would maintain the capital fabric of the school and appoint the governors. That model of the voluntary-aided school was copied in the 1980s, when the Conservatives introduced the grant-maintained system. The only difference with foundation schools, which were introduced in 1998 under the School Standards and Framework Act, is that the old grant-maintained schools became foundation schools and were financed through the LEA budget rather than directly by the department for education, as grant-maintained schools had been.
	I stress that Amendments Nos. 12 to 15 do not seek to undo this process in any sense. We accept that church schools and foundation schools exist in the system and that they have been—as the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, and the Minister both stressed in their arguments in Committee—a popular and successful model of governance albeit, as the Sutton Trust research highlighted, one serving a disproportionately middle class constituency. We are also happy to see this model extended to more schools, new and old, where that is the wish of the local community.
	That is the key issue in this group of amendments. Amendments Nos. 12, 13 and 14 seek to allow local education authorities to propose the establishment of a new community school alongside other proposals that may go forward for foundation schools or for other, what I would call, "company schools" run by companies such as Edison as foundations in competition with new schools. That is essentially what my noble friend Lady Williams, in moving the amendments in Committee, called establishing a level playing field between the foundation proposals and the community proposals.
	In Committee, we had a protracted discussion on these issues, with extensive consideration of international comparisons and the virtues or otherwise of comprehensive education. As the noble Baroness will probably remember, the debate ran late into the night. I do not wish to consider all those issues again, and the set of amendments that we have tabled today is slimline. It concentrates only on when a local education authority may propose a community school, to be considered alongside other proposals.
	The Government rightly state that the Bill allows local education authorities to propose a community school; but, whereas other providers, more or less irrespective of their track record, may propose these schools—it should be remembered that the proposals are in competition with each other, and the providers will then be judged on their track record—LEAs are not allowed to enter that competition unconditionally unless they have been awarded the top performance assessment rating of "4". Only 11 out of some 145 local authorities have achieved that top assessment rating. The remaining local authorities would all need to satisfy further criteria and obtain the Secretary of State's permission to put forward proposals.
	We have tabled Amendment No. 15, because even when an authority meets the criteria and is within the top Ofsted category, it still needs permission from the Secretary of State to publish its proposals. Our amendment states that when a majority of parents have indicated in a ballot that they wish to have the chance to consider local authority proposals, those proposals shall be published alongside the others.
	In his concluding remarks in Committee, the Minister emphasised that the Government had,
	"struck a sensible balance ... between allowing local authorities that have a good track record and can show that they support the principle of diversity to be able, in appropriate circumstances, to promote community schools while ensuring that there are strong incentives for diversity, especially in areas where local authorities are lower performers".—[Official Report, 12/7/06; col. 818.]
	We maintain that there is not a fair balance. There are constraints limiting the scope of local authorities to publish their proposals and put them alongside others. First, such constraints on their rights to publication run counter to the principles of local choice and local accountability. As democratically accountable institutions, councils need flexibility to respond to local needs and circumstances. They should be required to present a full range of options for new schools in their communities. If local people want a new school and the locality needs one, a community school should be among the choices.
	Secondly, the current proposals contradict the Government's wider devolution agenda. The Lyons local government review's interim report highlights the need for local government to be less constrained, more accountable locally and more innovative. The principle of earned autonomy which supersedes local people's wishes and accountability can impact across a large range of local authority commissioning and delivery functions. It is at odds with the Government's commitment to devolve power to local communities.
	Lastly, the Government's proposals run against the principles of the Bill itself, which sets out a new strategic role for local authorities in education and seeks to promote choice and diversity and to champion pupils and parents. By allowing only certain councils the freedom to propose new community schools, the Government are suggesting that only certain councils can undertake the full strategic role that all councils have a duty to deliver.
	As I indicated in my opening remarks, schools are provided and run for the benefit of the local community. A good part of the council tax that we pay goes towards the provision of that education. We elect our local councils to oversee these activities and decide what best suits local people. They are democratically accountable and should have some say in what sort of schools best meet local needs.

Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, I have not entered into any of the debates so far on the Bill because I live north of the Border and my own experience, which is out of date but fairly copious on the subject of state education in schools, has not seemed relevant. But there are issues—this is one and there will be another later today in which I hope to take part—which transcend our borders in the United Kingdom.
	It seems to me that the Government and the leadership of my own party are now asking themselves whether much more autonomy of professionals in schools will bear great fruit. They are asking themselves whether teachers and others in schools can stand a lot more trust from the public in what they do, more freedom and more responsibility. The Scottish Executive have concluded that they cannot stand those things, and that conclusion has been endorsed by the teachers' unions. Of course, the Scottish Executive partly consist of the Liberal Democrat Party.
	Looking at what is happening in schools in England, it seems to me that the Government are certainly right. It is very exciting what more freedom can do to help professionals to provide better schools. It is not at all exciting to see what lack of freedom is doing to the Scottish education system, whose outcome is less good than before, going by most of the measures applied. I do not want to run down my own country: I am a great believer in Scottish education and I am sure that it will recover.
	The question raised by my noble friend in the amendment is simply: should they be asked to continue to govern in future years, will the Government be prepared to increase the autonomy of schools and to have more foundation schools? If they are not, I think that she may be suggesting that our own party would be interested in exploring that. I shall be very interested to hear the Minister's reply.

Lord Adonis: My Lords, the House is grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Sharp and Lady Buscombe, for coming back to us with their slimline amendments. We remember the non-slimline versions, which occupied us for many hours. I am glad that we have now managed to focus the debate on two specific issues: that of promoting community schools and whether there should be local authority balance in respect of them; and the duty to promote non-community schools.
	The amendments in this group tabled by the noble Baronesses have opposing intents. The noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, wants us to encourage all schools to become trust, foundation or voluntary schools, while the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, wants there to be more community schools and wishes to amend Clause 7 so that local authorities may promote new community schools in all circumstances. I hope that I may come across as the voice of sweet reason because we want to come through the middle between these two extreme positions and stick with what the Bill proposes—namely, that schools and local authorities should consider the case for trust or foundation status on its merit. We believe those merits are substantial.
	I strongly underline what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, who spoke with all the authority of a former chief inspector of schools, particularly in highlighting the contribution which greater autonomy can make to schools operating in more challenging circumstances. The evidence I have strongly supports the points he made in respect of academies where results are rising significantly faster than the national average, both at key stage 3 and GCSE. Furthermore, looking at the relative performance in schools in the most challenging communities, foundation schools, voluntary-aided schools and community schools, there is a differential level of performance in favour of foundation and voluntary-aided schools.
	Among schools where more than 21 per cent of pupils were eligible for free school meals last year, the proportion getting five or more GCSEs in voluntary-aided schools was 48 per cent and in foundation schools 47 per cent, against 40 per cent in community schools.
	I join my noble friend Lady Morris in paying tribute to the work of all schools. I visit schools constantly, as she does. I make no differentiation in the comments and the praise I give to schools whatever their category. We should support them all and they all go about their job in a highly professional way. But I believe that the evidence is clear that, all other things being equal, greater autonomy helps promote higher standards. Many schools are keen to explore opportunities for trust status and academy status, and since we simplified the arrangements more schools are opting for foundation status. That also supports this point of view. We believe that this decision should be taken by existing schools. Therefore, we do not favour Amendment No. 4, which provides this new duty.
	Local authorities more directly control community schools. Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable that they should have to demonstrate a good track record before setting up new community schools.
	It is now a truism that schools run best when they run themselves. But that is true. We seek to build on successful experience. Local authorities without track records which lead one to believe that they can take on these new responsibilities successfully, should establish schools on the foundation, trust or voluntary-aided models.
	The House knows that we have made concessions on new community schools, as set out in Clauses 7 and 8. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, asked whether schools in the highest performing category may automatically publish proposals for a community school in a competition. I can state clearly that they can do so automatically. They do not require the permission of the Secretary of State. We believe that we have gone as far as is consistent with the need for better schools in areas where they simply are not good enough. I am not prepared to stand here and defend failure, blighting the life chances of children. Therefore, I do not accept that a local authority should have an unfettered right, however bad its track record, to promote schools which it more directly manages. A local authority with a poor track record should commission those with better prospects of success—be they a parents group or an education foundation—to take on the task by means of a trust or a voluntary-aided school or an academy.
	Amendment No. 15, spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, would allow local authorities to publish proposals for schools outside a competition without the need for the Secretary of State's approval where a ballot of parents had supported it. We support the role of parents. The Bill makes specific provision to strengthen their role by giving them more choice and more say in the education of their children. Our position on parental ballots has not changed since these matters were raised in Committee and in another place, and we do not support this amendment. This particular ballot proposal is especially unsatisfactory in our view. In effect, the amendment provides that local parents should be able to vote to have no choice before they even know what the choice is. It is hard to see how that could benefit parents or the local community.
	The Bill already places new duties on local authorities to promote diversity and choice and to respond to specific representations from parents. Clause 10 requires consultation with appropriate parties before any proposals are brought forward and guidelines will make clear that that includes parents. If consultation with parents favours a particular type of school, that will certainly add weight to that proposal when the local authority or the adjudicator comes to take its decision in the usual way.
	We accept that in certain circumstances, such as the amalgamation of junior and infant schools, competition in the provision of a new school may not be in the best interests of the local community. Where that is the case, the current mechanisms set out in Clause 10 are in place to provide for proposals to come forward without a competition, but we see no reason to amend the provision further. Therefore, we oppose all the amendments.

Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendments Nos. 70 and 80.
	Amendment No. 6 raises the issue of schools, local education authorities and community cohesion. We spent a long time in Committee discussing these issues, in a debate that ranged widely over parental choice and the concept of community schools—both in the sense that we have just discussed in Amendment No. 4, and in that a school provides a location for many community services. There may be, on the same site, not just a secondary school but a pre-school, children's clinics, extended after-school activities, adult education and even, sometimes, old people's day centres.
	The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, questioned whether the amendment that we have brought back as Amendment No. 6 is in the right place, as Section 14 of the 1996 Act is about establishing new schools. I will return to that in a moment. However, much of this Bill is also about establishing new foundation schools, and it is perfectly viable that we should do so. The noble Lords, Lord Gould and Lord Skidelsky, questioned whether the term community, in its old-fashioned, geographical sense, had any meaning these days, but many others argued that, in some areas of the country at least, community and a sense of belonging are important.
	I do not propose to repeat the debate. We can justify using the term "community cohesion", which is used in Clause 33(6), which provides that the board of governors of foundation and community schools,
	"shall, in carrying out its functions in relation to the school, promote community cohesion".
	In his winding up speech, the Minister drew attention to the draft regulations and statutory instruments on competitions to replace failing schools with foundation schools. They require those proposing new schools to provide,
	"a description of what the proposals are intended to deliver in terms of community cohesion",
	and,
	"the objectives which the promoters intend to set to further the aims of inclusiveness and partnership working".
	The Minister said that also to be taken into account should be, first,
	"the extent to which, and how satisfactorily in the circumstances of the community, the proposals [for new schools] address the need to promote community cohesion",
	and, secondly,
	"the extent to which the proposals take account of the needs of families and the wider community".—[Official Report, 5/7/06; col. 310.]
	I make no apologies for bringing back the issue of community cohesion. In Amendments Nos. 6 and 70, we are arguing that this obligation—which is in the Bill in relation to foundations for trust schools and in the regulations in relation to local authorities and the adjudicator taking decisions on school closures and competitions—should be in the Bill explicitly for local education authorities. If Section 14 of the Education Act 1996 is about establishing new schools, and local education authorities are being asked to think about diversity and parent choice, they should be thinking also about community cohesion.
	Why do we put such emphasis on community cohesion? I can do no better than quote the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, in Committee:
	"We must have some regard to a school within a community framework, particularly where the community is socially and economically disadvantaged. As schools increasingly become places for the extended school day—where there are recreational facilities for the community, increased participation and a focus for lifelong learning—I see them becoming valued and important centres of community life. That is especially true in poorer communities, where people do not go outside their community much".—[Official Report, 5/7/06; col. 298.]
	He described some communities as "housing deserts". We know very well that these days pubs, post offices and shops are closing on housing estates. They are becoming housing deserts. If we close schools as well, there is no locus for that community to cohere around, which is why we are anxious to see community cohesion in the Bill.
	It is also significant that the Minister argued that the early part of the Bill places,
	"new duties on local authorities to ensure fair access to educational opportunity and to promote the fulfilment of every child's potential in addition to the existing duty to promote high standards. We want to ensure that ... every child achieves their full potential, and nothing we can do will help schools better to promote social and community cohesion in their work than by succeeding in eliminating education inequalities based on class and background. We believe that we achieve that purpose in the Bill.".—[Official Report, 5/5/06; col. 310.]
	But whereas the Childcare Act has written into it the aim of reducing educational inequalities, that is not so in this Bill.
	We may bring back at Third Reading an alternative amendment because the Bill does not place a specific duty on local authorities to improve wellbeing and reduce inequalities. If it did, we might not have tabled this amendment, but it does not and we therefore propose that a duty to promote social inclusion and community cohesion should be written into the Bill, at this point for local authorities and in Clause 40 for admission forums.
	Amendment No. 70 deals with the same issue as it relates to admission forums. Just as we think it important that local authorities should take an overall view of the promotion of social inclusion within their areas, so it is even more important that admission forums—in a sense the specialised agencies within local education authorities now dealing with admissions—should be aware and recognisant of exactly the same issues. Schools need to be a vibrant part of their community. Letting them wither on the vine can kill a whole community. It is important that those dealing with schools admissions are aware of the role they play in helping communities to continue to thrive.
	Amendment No. 80 tackles a somewhat different area of disadvantage and comes at it from a different angle. Here we are talking about schools forums, which are concerned with the distribution of money that is allocated to a local authority under its dedicated schools budget. The job of schools forums is to share out that money between different schools. In the calculations made on how much government money should be spent by each local education authority at the local level, weighting is given to various indices of disadvantage such as the number of children on free school meals and the number deemed to have special educational needs of one sort or another. Local education authorities in areas of greater disadvantage receive relatively more funding than do those in areas perceived to be advantageous. But whether those resources are passed through to the schools is a matter for schools forums. There is a question about whether they too use a weighting formula to give schools with a large number of disadvantaged kids their "fair share" of the resources. In many authorities, this does not happen. Money is to an extent allocated on a per-pupil basis rather than weighted towards the disadvantaged, or where weight is given to the disadvantaged it is not the full weighting given to such disadvantage in the government formula itself.
	Members on these Benches feel strongly that the schools which need the extra resources are the ones in areas of disadvantage. It is precisely in these schools that one wants to see extra teachers in the classroom. These children should be taught in small groups and often need individual attention. All this demands more resources because you need more people—and that costs a lot more money. We feel it is right that where local authorities receive extra resources to help them cope with disadvantage, they are channelled towards the schools which need them. Amendment No. 80 is designed to influence schools forums into doing precisely that. I beg to move.

Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, I shall speak at the same time to Amendment No. 82A, which is in my name and is part of this group. I should perhaps say at the beginning that Amendment No. 8 has been suggested to me by the Children's Rights Alliance, which represents a number of organisations concerned with children's welfare, including Save the Children, of which I was for a number of years a trustee and executive council member.
	The issue here is consultation with pupils on all matters affecting their school. This has been raised on previous occasions, and I think that the Government accept the principle that pupils should be consulted, which is in line with the obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, the view of the Government has hitherto been that a new statutory provision is not required, and they will continue to encourage schools to follow the Working Together guidance. However, the alliance feels that this is not enough. A statutory right is needed to provide a firm foundation for pupil participation in all schools. Steps must be taken to strengthen pupil participation in line with the obligations under the UN convention.
	Recent research indicates that the guidance has not led to change. Less than one third of students felt that they were consulted when school policies were discussed. A survey by the Children's Rights Alliance indicated that of the 99 LEAs that responded, fewer than 45 per cent had taken any action to inform school staff of pupil participation guidance, fewer than 20 per cent had run any training for it, and only 10 per cent had informed pupils of the guidance. Many LEAs did not know which guidance was being referred to.
	Everyone agrees in principle with pupil participation. It encourages positive behaviour, and better teacher-student relationships emerge when it happens. Pupils want more of a say. Young people-led organisations, such as the British Youth Council, want to see the introduction of a statutory right. I tabled the amendment to an early part of the Bill because of its importance. There is no need to make a long speech about the principle involved, because I am sure that most noble Lords would agree with it. I hope that this time around the Minister will be prepared to agree that this is a right that should be in the Bill, and I hope that he will be prepared to accept the amendment or will agree to come back with a government amendment to achieve the same result.
	Amendment No. 82A is about the involvement of children in the exclusion process. Guidance on school exclusions in England states that in situations where the governing body of a school reviews the exclusion,
	"they should allow and encourage the excluded pupil to attend the meeting and speak, if the parent requests this".
	In reference to appeals hearings,
	"an excluded pupil ... should normally be encouraged to attend the hearing and to speak on his or her own behalf, if he or she wishes to do so and the parent agrees".
	I emphasise that the parent should agree.
	Although the guidance recommends that pupils be given a voice in the exclusion process, it is not enforceable and not all schools make provision for children and young people to make representations at discipline committees or appeal hearings. Furthermore, the current guidance does not cover the provision of relevant information for children and young people regarding the exclusion. As a result, children are not always in a position to make representations at exclusion hearings, even if they are encouraged to attend. The Government made assurances that the guidance would be updated in 2004. Changes were finally made in September 2006, calling on schools to "allow and encourage" the pupil to give their version of events. However, they still have no right of appeal on their own exclusion, and the guidance has not been strengthened sufficiently to address our concerns on this issue.
	The Government rightly place much emphasis on citizenship and taking responsibility for one's actions. Giving children a voice in exclusion hearings forces them to think about their actions and the consequences of their actions and allows them to explain why they behaved in the way they did. This goes to the heart of being a good citizen.
	In a Save the Children consultation undertaken with young people excluded from school, many of them felt a sense of injustice and disempowerment because they were not given an opportunity to put their side of the story. One young boy stated:
	"You don't get given your chance to say what happened. How are they going to know what happened".
	Some professionals feel that the current ineffective involvement of young people in the exclusion process can cause them to be unaware of what it is they have done, and this has resulted in their exclusion, making a reoffence highly probable. That serves no one's interests. In some cases, children are excluded on a false premise. Making false assumptions and denying a child the right to defend himself or herself leads only to alienation and bitterness, entrenching negative attitudes both towards school and wider society.
	Excluding a pupil, even when it is merited, is very serious indeed, given the impact that exclusion has on a pupil's life chances. Truancy and school exclusion are in the background of 70 per cent of young offenders. The fact that some pupils are consigned to this fate on false grounds is unacceptable. Giving pupils a fair hearing goes some way to addressing a failure in the system. Both young people and professionals to whom Save the Children spoke when it was doing its survey perceived a lack of standard procedure and practice in listening to children's views, resulting in anger and frustration and engendering a feeling of powerlessness and low self-esteem. It is believed that fully involving children in the exclusion process will ensure that they take responsibility for their actions and do not become disengaged from school and from society altogether.
	When a similar amendment was debated during proceedings on the then Education Bill in 2005, the Government promised to strengthen guidance, rather than amend regulations. Now the time has come to review whether the guidance is having the required effect. It is about time that we looked at the possibility of including legislative change in this Bill that would give children in England the same rights as in Scotland and Wales. I hope that this time around, the Government will be prepared to reconsider what they have said on this issue. In the mean time, I beg to move.

Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, on Amendment No. 8 and have added my name to it. I also support her Amendment No. 82A, to which, I am afraid, I was too late to add my name—but I would have liked to. She rightly said that the Children's Rights Alliance for England, which does so much to promote children's rights, believes that pupils need a statutory right to have their views considered in matters affecting the conduct of their school, which has a great impact on their everyday lives. Of course, schools would still require guidance and support to implement the amendment, which would make education law, policy and practice consistent with broader developments in public services and give England's children entitlements that Scottish children have had since 2000.
	I sometimes feel a little frustrated when talking about the voice of the child in your Lordships' House. I often wish that we could hear children themselves standing up in this place to tell us why they would like to have statutory rights to have their voices heard, rather than having to rely on elderly Baronesses such as myself and some of my similarly minded colleagues. However, I am afraid that your Lordships will have to make do with the rather second-rate effort that I have to make on behalf of children.
	In Committee, the Minister said that the Government unreservedly agreed with the second part of the amendment tabled at that time, which aimed to remove the current exemption of nursery-age children from the consultation duties on schools and local authorities. Indeed, he has done something about that, for which I very much thank him. I also thank him for his Amendment No. 116 in this group, which accepts the point that these Benches made in relation to the development of a school behaviour policy to which every child in a school, rather than just a sample, should have the opportunity to contribute his views. That is a valuable move forward.
	In relation to the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, the Minister said that the Government would continue to encourage schools to follow the Working Together guidance. However, encouraging schools to implement that guidance is not enough. We need a statutory right to pull the situation forward to provide a firm foundation for pupil participation in all schools.
	In its recent report on the Bill, the Joint Committee on Human Rights notes that it has,
	"written to the Secretary of State asking whether, in light of the requirements of Article 12",
	of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child,
	"the Bill could do more to provide children with greater opportunity to express their views in matter which affect them".
	Article 12 of the UNCRC states that all children,
	"have the right to express and to have their views taken into account and given due weight according to their age and maturity in all matters affecting them".
	In October 2002, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child stated that the Government,
	"should take further steps to promote, facilitate and monitor children's effective participation, including in schools, like school councils".
	The Government have certainly done much on school councils and I give the Minister a great deal of credit for that. The committee also stated that the Government,
	"should take further steps to consistently reflect the obligations of both paragraphs of article 12 in legislation".
	Now we are moving close to an opportunity for the UK Government to do that, because they must submit their next report to the UNCRC in 2007. Accepting Amendment No. 8 would be considered by that committee a major step towards fulfilling its recommendations in the 2002 report.
	I also very much support Amendment No. 82A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, about the well-being and educational attainment of children who have been excluded from school. We might have debated it later, in the group that starts with Amendment No. 119 on exclusions, although I accept that part of the noble Baroness's amendment relates to giving the child a proper voice in the proceedings, so there is a case for debating the matter now.
	She rightly lays out in the proposed new subsection (5A) the basic principles of well-being and educational attainment, to which we should adhere when making arrangements for children who, for one reason or another, have had to be excluded. She also asks that the child's right to represent himself in his own right and to have the necessary information to enable him to do so is given to him.
	That is important because some children cannot rely on their parents to represent them. Some parents do not want to be bothered or feel intimidated by the system so that they feel reluctant to appear before what seems a frightening panel, as if they are in the dragon's den, to defend their child. Of course we should do everything we can to encourage them to feel more comfortable in taking part in those proceedings, but we also need to do something about ensuring that the child has its own rights as an individual whose whole life is in the hands of the panel considering their exclusion.

Lord Dearing: My Lords, I warmly support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, on listening to the voice of pupils. I hope that the Government will respond warmly to it. However, welcome though it is, I regard it only as paving the way for what has already been done in Wales, where, using the powers of the 2002 Act, school councils have been made mandatory in all ordinary schools. It has been prescribed in regulations that schools' councils should be properly elected; their functions to comment on matters affecting the school and education have been laid down; their representations must be considered by the head and the governing body—and they are entitled to a response under those regulations.
	I recognise that it is early days to form a judgment on the success of what has been done in Wales and I know that the Minister will want to wait for the finally considered views of Professor Whitty before marching on. Perhaps I may quote the views of the head teacher of Malet Lambert, a school that I left many years ago. She stated in a letter to me:
	"A school that is passionate about education and effective in raising standards needs to consider, promote and champion the rights and accountabilities of the student body. The school council gives a coherent voice and overt pathways for this process. I would strongly recommend this process and its benefits".
	I consulted another head of a school that I know, Christ's College in Guildford, where again there was enthusiasm for the idea of a council, with contributions ranging from, "Hey, they're proposing a new menu", and the school's council was invited to try it. Other opinions were sought on bullying and the plans for a new building—all useful input from the pupils. The noble Baroness referred very modestly to the role played by people such as her in representing the views of children. The headmistress at Malet Lambert is so convinced of the value of consultation that she is prepared to bring her school council to the Minister to do the noble Baroness's job for her.

Lord Adonis: My Lords, this has been an immensely valuable debate. I begin by saying that, if the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, would like to bring his school council to meet me, I shall be delighted to meet its members. Indeed, I am struck by the fact that, when I visit schools, it is now normal for me to meet the school council. That does not happen at my request but at the instigation of the school.
	If I had to put my finger on the single biggest change that has taken place at schools between the time when I was a pupil—it was not that long ago; none the less, it was a reasonable period ago—and schools today, it would be the outbreak of democracy. That has been quite remarkable in recent years. I take the example of school councils, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, and my noble friend Lady Turner. They are now present in virtually all secondary schools and in an increasing number of primary schools.
	One thing that most surprised me when I became a Minister and started to visit primary schools was the growing prevalence of school councils there and the fact that they can, and do, operate very successfully in promoting precisely the kind of inclusion that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, referred to—even among the very youngest children. I had to change my thinking in respect of that as I visited schools. I realised that it was perfectly possible to consult even young children in a serious way. Of course, you have to make allowances for their age, but they can play a role. My daughter, who is very young, told me about the elections that took place for the school council at her primary school and the rival programmes that were put forward in respect of school meals and so on. I realise that this is a big idea which has a lot further to go, and we are anxious to see it do so.
	In replying to this group of amendments, I shall speak also to government Amendments Nos. 116 and 136. Government Amendment No. 136 would amend Section 176 of the Education Act 2002, which provides for local authorities and governing bodies to have regard to guidance on the consultation of pupils about issues affecting them. The amendment would broaden the definition of "pupil" to include nursery age pupils in schools and in maintained nursery schools. I bring this amendment forward in direct response to the case made in our earlier debates by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. She rightly argued that we should broaden the definition of "pupil" to include nursery age pupils in schools and in maintained nursery schools. This provision also reflects the position taken in the recent Childcare Act, which was significantly improved in its passage through this House by the inclusion of provisions very similar to the one that the noble Baroness proposed and which I am glad to bring forward this afternoon.
	Amendment No. 8 tabled by my noble friend Lady Turner would place a direct duty on school governing bodies and local authorities to have regard to the ascertainable views of all their pupils on matters that affect them, having regard to each pupil's age and maturity. It would place a duty on schools and local authorities to consult pupils.
	We do not agree that amending primary legislation is the best or most powerful way to bring about the improvements that we seek. As I said earlier, local authorities and governing bodies must already have regard to statutory guidance on the consultation of pupils in connection with decisions that affect them. We are encouraging schools to put into practice the 2004 guidance called Working Together: Giving children and young people a say, issued under Section 176, in ways that are meaningful to children and young people. A prime example of that is school councils, which we are strongly encouraging. Indeed, we part fund School Councils UK, an educational charity.
	Further to that, as the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, mentioned, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has asked Professor Geoff Whitty, the director of the Institute of Education at the University of London, to report to us specifically on strengthening the guidance in respect of school councils. Professor Whitty is engaged in that work at the moment. We expect his report early in the New Year and we will be guided by him on issues such as the one to which the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, referred; whether we should follow the practice in Wales of making school councils statutory. In the Education Act 2002 we have the power to do so, but we want to wait for the report of Professor Whitty, who is engaging very substantially with young people in drawing that up, before we decide on a precise way forward in that respect.
	Furthermore, we have ensured that school inspection arrangements make the views of children and young people an important part of assessing how local areas are doing and we have changed the law so that school governing bodies can now appoint pupils as associate members, allowing them to attend governing body meetings and become members of committees. Last month, when I visited Finland, I was very struck by the engagement of pupils on the governing bodies of schools, which is a practice that is not usual here. We have now made it possible for schools to appoint pupils as associate members of governing bodies and I believe that that is a development that will grow in future years.
	Current arrangements offer a non-prescriptive approach for schools, allowing them to find the best way for them of involving young people. We believe that this is the right way to proceed and we do not wish to proceed by means of mandatory requirements on all local authorities and all schools in all circumstances. We want to avoid introducing a very broad statutory requirement that is likely to cause schools difficulties about the meaning and interpretation of the law and increase the risk of judicial review. We want to secure practical improvements in student participation and in taking account of the voice of the child. On that basis, I hope that my noble friend Lady Turner will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
	I now turn to government Amendment No. 116. Clause 85 places a duty on the school governing body to draw up a statement of principles on behaviour and discipline that will inform the school behaviour policy determined by the head teacher. Clause 85(3) obliges the governing body to consult various persons before making or revising the statement of principles. Those persons include the head teacher, parents, and a sample of the registered pupils at the school.
	When we were debating Clause 85 in Committee, the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Sharp of Guildford, laid an amendment that sought to oblige school governing bodies to consult not just a sample of pupils but all registered pupils at their schools on the principles underlying the school behaviour policy. I agreed at the time that the case for seeking the views of all pupils in this regard was compelling. I committed to taking another look at this clause. I am glad to say that government Amendment No. 116 removes the sample qualification and extends the consultation process to include all registered pupils at a school, precisely to meet the points that she made again this afternoon and the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Elton; namely, that the more pupils at a school own the behaviour policy and feel a real stake in having forged it, the more likely they are to comply with it for the general good of all pupils and the general good of the wider school community.
	I turn to Amendment No. 82A in the name of my noble friend Lady Turner, concerning exclusions from school. In Committee, my noble friend rightly pointed to the fact that during deliberations on the Education Bill 2005 we undertook to strengthen DfES guidance to emphasise that the excluded child, or child threatened with exclusion, should be encouraged to make representations about his exclusion at various stages of the exclusion procedure, including at the point of exclusion, but have not yet brought forward those changes. I said in Committee that I regretted those amendments had not been made, but I am pleased to assure the House that they were made in September in the latest exclusions guidance. Although my noble friend has quoted views to the contrary, I believe that on any reading of the changes that we have made, they meet the commitments that we have given and give a very substantial voice to the child who is proposed to be excluded in the deliberations concerning the potential exclusion.
	I have here the guidance on improving behaviour and attendance—I shall readily make it available to noble Lords. It highlights on the first page the main changes that are made in the more recent version of the guidance. As one of the key changes made, it highlights:
	"Encouraging the pupil to have a voice in the exclusion procedure, if he and his parents wish".
	At every stage of the guidance itself there are changes to promote the views of the child. For example, it states:
	"Before deciding whether to exclude a pupil, either permanently or for a fixed period, the head teacher should: ... allow [and encourage] the pupil to give his or her version of events".
	It makes the same requirements in respect of looked-after children.
	"Letters of notification of exclusion must state"—
	not only—
	"the parent's right to make representations about the exclusion to the governing body",
	but also—this is a further change—how the pupil may be involved in that. Pupils are also invited to attend exclusion hearings and to speak, if the parent agrees. I believe these changes meet the commitments that we gave during the passage of the Education Act 2005.

Baroness Howe of Idlicote: My Lords, could that also be extended to cover the case where there is no parent and yet the need for someone to represent the child could take that place? I know the Minister says that is not covered at the moment, but could he consider that to see whether it could be covered?

The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth: My Lords, I intend to speak to Amendment No. 9, which amendsClause 5, and then to comment on other amendments in this group. The matter that my amendment addresses was raised in Committee by one of my colleagues when I could not be in my place. I raise it again because I am not satisfied that without the prompt or goad of legislation local authorities will consistently appoint as school improvement partners for schools with a religious character educationists who fully understand and support that character. We have anecdotal evidence to the contrary. I know anecdotal evidence is always a little dangerous, but never mind, we have it. In a number of cases, SIPs are being appointed who are undoubtedly highly qualified and experienced teachers and advisers able to help the school in various ways, but they are hampered because they do not really understand the religious character of the school. My amendment is modest; I am not asking for the appointment only of people of the same faith as the school, but of people who are able to help the school preserve and develop its religious character. I know the Minister understands the point, and I do not labour it. I hope he may smile on my wish to see the point enshrined in law.
	Let me now turn to the other amendments in this group. I must confess that my speech almost feels like the two journeys I made as a child when we went to Denmark for Christmas in 1954. On the way over on the DFDS ferry, the North Sea was as flat as duck pond and we could see our faces in water, but on the way back, the storm doors went up before we left Esbjerg harbour and the linen tablecloths were soaked to prevent the crockery sliding off on to the floor. We will see how the debate goes.
	Amendment No. 16 deals with of admissions to Church and other faith schools, which has been much discussed in your Lordships' House and in the other place, as well as in the media. The Church of England's position is clear: we are strongly committed to providing schools that are distinctively Christian and that are at the same inclusive. We see no opposition between these two aims. Part of a school's Christian commitment is to reach out to include the wider community, not for the purpose of indoctrination, but in order to offer education clearly based on Christian values. Church of England schools also aim to nurture in their faith the children of Christian families, to encourage those of other faiths and to challenge those who, rightly and sincerely, claim to have no religious faith whatever.
	The Church of England is expanding its number of secondary schools in response to parental demand where communities wish it. The majority of these new schools are serving disadvantaged communities and have inclusive admissions policies. Most give priority to local children or do not admit on the basis of faith. Of the rest, only one has a proportion of places for local, as opposed to faith, priority lower than 50 per cent and that school allocates 33 per cent of places to those of other faiths on a local basis.
	Noble Lords may know that I wrote to the Secretary of State earlier this month to make a specific commitment that all new Church of England schools should have at least 20 per cent of places available to children with no requirement that they be of practising Christian families. The places would not be left empty if they were not filled by such children, so this would technically not be a quota, but would be a proportion. That commitment relates explicitly to new Church of England schools. The fact that I have not had an enormously negative postbag since that letter was published suggests to me not that the general public had not read it or heard about it, but rather that what the letter commits the Church to very largely, but not totally, represents current practice in Church of England schools.
	The noble Lord, Lord Baker, is proposing that all new Church and other faith schools without exception should be required by law to make that commitment. I want to be clear that I do not support his proposal. My voluntary commitment is for the Church of England; it is not a statement of policy for all schools with a religious character. There is no need for legislation in this area, particularly not at this time. I add that the cross I am wearing was made in Aarhus in Denmark for my grandfather by the local goldsmith, Hingelberg, a Jewish firm.
	As I have said, the Church supports the provision of more schools by and for minority faith communities. It would not be right to require the same commitment from them. They are themselves a sign of inclusion for their communities and of fledgling potential inclusion gradually over the years. They are not at the same stage as the Church of England schools in this respect. I say that as a statement of fact with which I know they agree rather than to crow. It is because of different social histories. Their very existence promotes community cohesion. Those educated at such schools will develop in self-respect within their own religious identity and thus in respect for others. Members of the community looking on from outside will also develop greater self-respect and respect for others as they see their religious community taking its full place in British society. That is in tune with the more positive aspects of the public debate around these issues. All this would be further enhanced by the development of robust and effective educational links between schools of a different character, which is very important. I welcome the commitment made by my friend the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham, Vincent Nichols, that Catholic schools will be inspected on such links. I would like to see government support for such links between all schools.
	I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, will not seek to test the opinion of the House on his amendment. I believe that it would send profoundly negative signals at this time to members of some of the other faith communities, the overwhelming majority of whom are decent and trustworthy and may well be somewhat bewildered at the fear and resentment they seem to arouse.
	I now turn to the two amendments in this group on collective worship and religious education. In May, the Churches' Joint Education Policy Committee, an inter-church body that I have the privilege of chairing, agreed a position paper on school collective worship. All the Churches' representatives agreed that we strongly support the continuation of collective worship in all schools, recognising the major contribution it makes to the spiritual and moral development of pupils, which is a prime goal of education. We recognise that other faith groups saw collective worship to be of benefit, even though its emphasis was mainly Christian. We look for Government support to improve the quality of the acts of collective worship and to ensure that all pupils are able to attend meaningful acts of worship at school. The way we do things now could be imaginatively improved—as they could have been 500 years ago when I was at school.
	It will be no surprise, therefore, that I shall not support the amendment in the names of the noble Baronesses—good friends of mine though they are—to remove the requirement for worship and replace it with an opportunity for spiritual and moral development. I believe prayer and worship to be a fundamental human instinct, however it is located within the religious spectrum, one that should be given expression and developed as part of people's education and as every pupil's entitlement in school, providing an important grammar and language for later life, even if the specific theological tenets are rejected. It is part of our common culture—changing, yes, but there. That would clearly not be the case through an assembly that gave no opportunity for prayer or worship.
	Everyone in their lives faces times of personal pain and sadness, whether through their own health problems or those of others close to them, or some community tragedy. We saw at Soham a few years ago, and we have seen in response to other tragedies, how the whole community comes together to pray and worship. Those who have never experienced the tradition of prayer and worship in school, unless they found it in their family and church, are at a disadvantage in those circumstances—although I know that that view is not universally shared.
	I find the provision for pupils to exclude themselves from RE the most baffling of all. It strikes at the very heart of what many of us, of whatever religious faith or none, are trying to develop in the current educational system of our country at this stage in our history. I emphasise "at this stage in our history". Whether one takes a specifically religious view of reality or a functional approach to what broad-based religious education can in the long term achieve for society as a whole, religious education is vital to the educational enterprise. In no school should religious education be about indoctrination. Those days have long gone. All church and other faith schools have committed themselves to teaching in religious education about other faiths as well as their own. We on these Benches would strongly oppose the provision in this amendment. We feel that it would send out the signal that the subject does not really matter precisely when it is increasing in popularity.
	I will say a word on the Government's amendment on the right of sixth-formers to decide whether to take part in collective worship at school. By freely choosing to study in a school sixth form, pupils with the support of their parents are deciding to submit themselves to the rules and regulations of the school in question and of schools in general. It is therefore arguable that, while those of compulsory school age should be able to be withdrawn from collective worship, that right should not be available to sixth-formers.
	However, if the amendment is approved, I would like it—and I know this view will be shared by others—to be made very clear in the DfES guidance to schools that daily collective worship is part of normal practice in sixth forms, it must be offered by the schools, and sixth-formers cannot withdraw from it casually. That should mean that at the very least, as in the case of parental withdrawal, a letter must be written to the head asking for permission to withdraw from collective worship. While it is recognised that heads cannot withhold permission, this should ensure that the matter is understood to be serious. Guidance should make it clear that it would be perfectly appropriate for a head to ask for an explanation of the pupil's reason for the request. An alternative educational or community activity should be specified to take place at the same time as the act of worship, which is entirely reasonable.
	If I can be given assurances on these matters, I shall not oppose the Government's amendments. Meanwhile, I beg to move.

Lord Baker of Dorking: My Lords, Amendment No. 16 stands in my name and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and the noble Lords, Lord Skidelsky and Lord Taverne. Before addressing the arguments, perhaps I may say on behalf of the House what a pleasure it is to see the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth back with us. We know that he has been seriously ill and his return today is due, I suspect, not only to the skill of his doctors but to the effectiveness of prayer.
	This is the third time this year that this House has debated faith schools. The first occasion was on an Unstarred Question by the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, in February, and the second was during the Committee stage of this Bill on 18 July, when I moved an amendment for a quota of 30 per cent of places in faith schools for non-faith children. We are debating it again today, and, as the Government have indicated that they will bring forward amendments on this issue for Third Reading on 30 October, there will be a fourth time. So we have debated this matter infinitely more than the House of Commons did. It is a credit to the House that, on an important matter of such major interest we have provided a focus for a national debate.
	When I moved my amendment in July, no one spoke in favour of exclusive faith schools. The Minister was not entirely hostile to the proposition, but I would describe his attitude as cool. He said that
	"a whole set of practical issues will emerge in seeking to have quotas".—[Official Report, 18/07/06; col. 1207.]
	Having recently attended a seminar when he spoke on private and public education, where inclusiveness was in his every second sentence, I know that inclusion runs in his veins. As he is the most intelligent Minister in his department—I hope that that does not entirely blight his career—he has probably had considerable influence in moving the Government to a change of opinion on this. We learnt about that in the leak of a Cabinet paper, no less, to the Sunday Times. I suspect that that leak will not be examined by the Cabinet Secretary because it not only had the fingerprints of the Secretary of State, but it had his name in the second line. I seem to remember that we were rather more subtle in Government, but that was a long time ago. It is clear from the leak that the Government are moving and have moved considerably on this matter. One should ask why this has happened. It has happened for two reasons.
	Over the past 50 years in our society, successive Governments and community leaders have been grappling with the problems of race and colour. Tremendous progress has been made to eliminating prejudice. The battle is not entirely won, but it is a great credit to our society that we have coped with those problems. Religion has not been centre stage; over the past 40 or 50 years everybody has been able to practice their own religion with complete freedom. It is one of the basic freedoms of our country. What has become more evident in the past few years is how religion can separate societies. The debate this summer, which probably started with the cartoons of Muhammad while the latest manifestation is Jack Straw and the veil, indicates that this is a matter of real concern which the Government now appreciate.
	The second reason why the Government have changed is what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth has just said. At the beginning of October he said that in future the Church of England would give priority to 20 per cent of pupils from other faiths or no faiths for new Anglican schools. Do I have that right?

The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth: My Lords, it is25 per cent, and I speak, I hope, as a mathematician.

Lord Baker of Dorking: My Lords, the right reverend Prelate says 25 per cent but Hansard will reveal that he said "20 per cent" in his speech. Any advance on that would be very welcome. That 25 per cent is a very wise and sensible move. I went to a Church of England primary school, Holy Trinity in Southport, during the war. It was totally inclusive. My closest friend was a Jewish boy. I learnt about the Jewish faith by going to his home on Fridays. It was my brand of Anglicanism, not too proselytising and not too fervent. We went to church twice a year and we started every day with a hymn and a prayer, but I think that most schools did in those days.
	As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth said, that reflects the practice of the Church of England today. He then hesitated—I understand why—before saying, "We are following the right path, but I do not to want to force any of the other religions in our country to follow my path". That reminded me of the description of Mr Pecksniff in Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens, when Dickens said that he was like a signpost: always pointing the way but never going. That is not entirely fair, because the Church of England is going, but although the road is so great and wonderful, it is not going to twist the arms of other religions to go down it with it. I understand its view.
	My amendment would mean that we would follow the Church of England's example and apply it to other schools. I think that it is worth reminding the House of the argument for inclusion. It is wrong to divide children by religion at the ages of five and 11. Where that has happened in societies such as Northern Ireland, that crop has produced a savage harvest. The comparison with Northern Ireland is fair. There is great intransigence, but there is now hope in that country because community schools are being established in which there are 40 per cent Catholics, 40 per cent Protestants and 20 per cent others. I have talked to the prime mover of that in Northern Ireland and it is a very inspiring move indeed.
	The second reason why inclusion is so good was expressed very clearly by Rabbi Romain, the rabbi of the synagogue in Maidenhead, when he said:
	"I want my children to sit next to a Sikh in class, play football in the break with a Methodist, to do homework with a Hindu, and walk to the bus stop with a Muslim before returning to their Jewish home ... Leaders of all faiths should put aside religious self-interest and make national cohesion a higher priority".
	Of course, he is not alone in that. The NUT strongly supports inclusion. So does Trevor Phillips, the head of the Commission for Racial Equality. David Bell, a former Chief Inspector of Schools, reported only two years ago that,
	"many young people are being educated in faith-based schools, with little appreciation of their wider responsibilities and obligations to British society".
	Then there is Amartya Sen, who was the master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and who won the Nobel prize for his distinguished writing on identity and violence. He has made the point again and again that you should not characterise people by one thing—Christian, Hindu or Muslim—or by their race or nationality. To put people in pens like that is a denial of human character, for the simple reason that each one of us is subject to a variety of influences of all sorts that affect our development. He thinks that that is very damaging. He said:
	"Being defined by one group identity over all others, overlooking whether you're working class or capitalist, left or right, what your language group is and your literary tastes are, all that interferes with people's freedom to make their own choices ... I think there is a real tyranny there. It doesn't look like tyranny - it looks like giving freedom and tolerance - but it ends up being a denial of individual freedom".
	I strongly support his words.
	The last person whom I pray in evidence for inclusion is Mr Cantle of the Cantle report. Your Lordships will remember the race riots in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley and the Cantle report spoke in rather chilling terms of "parallel and polarised lives". He said:
	"Self-segregation is an unacceptable basis for a harmonious community".
	He recommended that in all schools 25 per cent—one quarter—of places should be available to other faiths.
	I point out that my amendment relates only to new schools. It is too ambitious to try to move legislation to change what is in fact the educational settlement of our country. I hope that many existing faith schools will follow the example of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth, but the amendment specifically relates to new faith schools. There is a problem and we should not add to it.
	In parenthesis, the department should know much more about the existing faith schools that have been created. I have taken an interest in this, but although you can get a lot of information from the department's website about selection criteria, the department does not seem to know much about the schools. One new Muslim school told me that it had to send in photographs of its children—which is, of course, illegal. The department should watch that much more carefully, not just in the case of Muslim schools but of all schools. It was a BBC programme that revealed that the curriculum in some faith schools was being very marginally followed. In one of them, European history was not being taught at all.
	I turn to two groups who are very concerned about the amendment. First, there are the Roman Catholics. The first point to recognise is that many Roman Catholic schools today are inclusive. In secondary schools, 20 per cent of pupils come from other faiths. The Catholic Church does not look on that as a disadvantage or a curse but an opportunity to try to persuade those children to take a greater interest in religion. I think that the proportion in primary schools is about 17 per cent. Secondly, the amendment affects only new schools. I do not believe that there are any proposals to start any new Catholic secondary schools. Since 1997, there have been only two new Catholic faith schools—two primary schools, one in Milton Keynes and one in Cornwall—so the Catholic Church has not made a great advance in establishing new schools. I also point out the encouraging change of attitude that, for example, allows one of the new faith academies in Liverpool to be both Catholic and Anglican. That is very welcome.
	Perhaps I can say something about the Muslims. I have a high regard for Islam; I have read parts of the Koran. To describe the Islamic faith as purely concerned with violence is a total and ridiculous parody. All religions are capable of being distorted by their extremists. There have been six exclusive Muslim schools since the Government introduced the provision and they all have the purpose of creating total Muslim personalities through the training of children's spirits, intelligence, feelings and bodily senses. I have no particular quarrel with that, but that should be done in the mosque. If that is the object of Christian, Hindu, Sikh or Jewish schools, it should be done in the synagogue, the church or the temple. I should have thought that one purpose of the British education system is to try to create a British personality.
	The argument that is put, which I can quite understand, is that there are about 120 private Muslim schools, many of which provide pretty deplorable education and would certainly benefit from state funding. I see that the former Secretary of State for Education is nodding. I am sure that that is right. But if there is a request for public funding, it is entirely appropriate that the state should determine some standards and conditions to be met.
	I say to the leaders of the Muslim community who have influence in our society—

Baroness Massey of Darwen: My Lords, I support the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and join him in welcoming back the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth, for whom I have immense affection and respect, even though I fundamentally disagree with him on most occasions. I also thank the Minister for listening and responding to concerns. I have more questions to put to him this evening.
	My original amendment on faith schools, which I tabled and to which I spoke in Committee, proposed that no new faith schools should be created. In fact, I would still prefer that to be the case. I realise, however, that some compromise may be the way forward at this stage. That compromise should be to have schools that are not exclusive, as I am still concerned that, in the past eight years, nine out of10 attempts by faith groups to gain control of schools have been successful. Some of those results have been unfortunate, to say the least.
	We have got ourselves into a tangle on faith in schools, and we need to untangle the problem, not make it worse. We should learn from what has happened in Northern Ireland. I am also still concerned that the report on Bradford by the noble Lord, Lord Ouseley, observed,
	"signs that communities are fragmenting along racial, cultural and faith lines".
	His report goes on to say:
	"Segregation in schools is one indicator of this trend ... There is virtual apartheid in many secondary schools in the district".
	The amendment would at least partially address this issue if there was no fudge on the 25 per cent. Rumours of government amendments along these lines are welcome, but I hope that no such amendments give rise to escape routes.
	Poll after poll of parents and the general public consistently show that they want good neighbourhood schools. The noble Lord, Lord Dearing, described one such school in a community that he knows, and there has been much talk this evening about community cohesion in our discussion of other amendments. According to one poll, 79 per cent feel that separating children according to religious belief is wrong—as wrong as separating them according to colour or accent. Another poll found that 64 per cent of people oppose government funding for faith schools, fearing their impact on social cohesion.
	One interesting find is that women of Asian heritage have been vocal in opposing the expansion of faith schools. One education and Asian solidarity group felt that,
	"single faith schools will mean more discrimination and ... a greater stranglehold of the most conservative, anti-women ... individuals over our children's education and our communities as a whole".
	We must not forget that dividing off children also divides off parents. Parents meet in the playground, at social events or at parent-teacher meetings. It is dangerous to divide them in such a way. We are really talking about encouraging separate and isolated communities, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said, with fewer windows on the world. I am a governor at a school that is firmly set in a south-London community, with many different faiths and backgrounds. The children learn to celebrate each others' cultures and to enjoy each others' ceremonies in their schools. So do the parents. This mix results in a marvellous ethos and a lively and aspirational environment for all the pupils. Ethos and values need not, of course, come from having a faith.
	I return to my reasons for hoping the amendment will be accepted. The Government need to be firm and purposeful about tackling exclusivity in schools, otherwise loopholes will be exploited and difficulties, real or imagined, will be put in the way. I ask the Minister three questions about issues that have potential loopholes. First, is it true that the Association of Muslim Schools and the Christian Schools' Trust have asked for a faith-schools inspectorate to do the work presently done by Ofsted? If so, will this be allowed? Such a scheme would negate discussion of a wide range of values and beliefs. Surely education is about exploring options and not about dictating what children should think. Separate inspection systems would reinforce differences and divisions.
	Secondly, if a faith school under any 25 per cent ruling did not attract 25 per cent of pupils of other faiths or of no faith, would it still be eligible for state funding? I foresee all manner of reasons and excuses for failing to recruit other faiths, thereby avoiding having to broaden the educational offering. Thirdly, if an independent faith school wanted to become a state school, would it be classed as a new school or would it be able to carry on under the old rules allowing it not to include other faiths in the intake?
	This is an important amendment, and I would be most grateful for the Minister's clarification on these issues, and for any reassurance he can give that the Government will support a 25 per cent intake of other faiths or no faith into new faith schools. If not, I fear that we will reinforce divisions in society rather than heal them.
	Amendment No. 104, in my name and that of the noble Baronesses, Lady Turner and Lady Flather, relates to collective worship and seeks re-examination of the law. The spirit of the amendment has enormous support in seeking to replace compulsory worship with assemblies of a spiritual nature in schools. There is widespread dissatisfaction with this law.

Baroness Massey of Darwen: Yes there is, my Lords. Some 70 per cent of secondary schools do not comply with conducting an act of worship in their schools. The amendment is supported by several teaching organisations and by many faith groups. In a national consultation held in 1998 on collective worship, many organisations, including the Christian Education Movement, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Professional Council for Religious Education, the National Association of Head Teachers and the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations all supported the spirit of the amendment. I mention all this because, when the amendment came up in Committee, the Minister said that the Government did not want to reopen the debate on collective worship because there was,
	"a fairly broad consensus within the educational and faith communities"—[Official Report, 10/7/06; col. 1204.]—
	in favour of the status quo. There is indeed broad consensus in the educational and faith communities, but it is in support not of the status quo but of reform. This consensus is not surprising. Teachers support a change. As the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders has said:
	"Compulsory worship is a contradiction in terms. Ordering a student to worship is like ordering them to enjoy mathematics".
	Heads, as he says,
	"cannot compel teachers to take religious services".
	Nor should they. The law on collective worship, he says,
	"has long passed its use-by date".
	The professional bodies for RE support a change, of course, as their subject is all about increasing understanding of the different beliefs in our society and assisting young people to come to their own conclusions about their own beliefs and values. The current requirement for collective worship is an impediment to this. Faith groups and organisations such as the British Humanist Association—I declare an interest as a member—support a change.
	We live in an increasingly diverse society, with increasingly diverse schools and in a context where most young people—65 per cent, according to a DfES assessment—have non-religious beliefs. They all deserve assemblies that recognise the ways in which they make meaning and purpose in their lives and the values that they are developing. Positive ethos and spirituality are not the province of religion alone. Religion does not have exclusive rights to the grammar—to use the words of the right reverend Prelate—of values.
	The amendment would straightforwardly replace the requirement to conduct collective worship with a requirement to hold assemblies that will further pupils',
	"spiritual, moral, social and cultural education".
	Teachers, including non-religious teachers, can and do use assemblies to demonstrate that moral and spiritual values can be framed on shared values found in different religions and beliefs, building on the common ground of our humanity. A reform in the law would encourage this good practice.
	If the law on worship and assemblies were changed, new guidance issued under the new law would doubtless continue to contribute to a better sharing of good practice in the provision of inclusive and educational assemblies, quite unlike the current requirement to provide collective worship.
	Inclusive assemblies, which I conducted when I was a teacher, can have great educational value. They can be based on literature, science, the arts, sport or citizenship, for example. They can build a collective ethos in the school either by bringing the school community together for shared experiences or for pupils to conduct the assembly themselves. Spiritual, moral, social and cultural development can be encouraged. Surely this is what assemblies are about.

Lord Alton of Liverpool: My Lords, before the noble Baroness touched on that point, she mentioned what she described as the vested interests that RE teachers might have and it seemed to me that she was diminishing the importance of the role of religious education. I am happy to hear her clarification.
	I want to speak those amendments in the group which seek to impose a mandatory quota on new faith schools and dilute their ethos by altering the arrangements for collective acts of worship. I understand the sincere motives that lie behind these amendments and the anxieties that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, has expressed today, and the need for diversity and integration. Coming, as I do, from a city such as Liverpool where there was great sectarianism in the past, I agree with him, and have been very much part of the move in that city to encourage ecumenism and inter-denominational relationships. These have come about as a result of a voluntary relationship, not of legislation.
	The amendments do not seek to address the fundamental causes of segregation, a point that the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, made very eloquently on Radio 4 a couple of days ago, but they risk undermining some of our country's most successful schools.
	Over the years, I have regularly heard, as we have in these debates, calls for the complete closure of Church schools. Although I know that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, does not share that view, there are Members of your Lordships' House who believe that. I think that in some ways it would be more straightforward to test that proposition in a Division rather than promote a "thin end of the wedge" amendment which will gradually emasculate Church schools. The Government, and others, offer a magician's bargain: they say that if we go along with the amendment on new faith schools, they will not touch existing ones—not for now, at any rate. But in a country where, in the past few days, a British Airways worker has been banned from wearing a cross on a necklace, the Minister would be surprised if people of religious faith were not anxious about the new intolerance that has been gathering a head of steam.
	We should be clear that Amendment No. 16 would significantly diminish the rights of governing bodies of faith schools to establish their own admission criteria, a right which was won in 1944, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, mentioned.
	Rather than resisting this punitive measure outright, the Government are now, we are told, considering handing over decisions to local authorities. In certain parts of the country, this will then become a political football, and faith schools will find themselves at the centre of controversy and division. There will be little consistency in outcome and it will doubtless lead to new postal code lotteries. Families who are able to will move to more benign districts. Paradoxically, the poorest will once again be the losers.
	In introducing the Bill, the Government made much of their desire, which I supported on Second Reading, to enhance the autonomy of schools, their trust in governing bodies and teachers, and the enhancement of parental choice. By interfering with something as central as admissions and taking that power away from schools, they are building an inherent contradiction into the legislation. Do we really have so little trust in governing bodies that, having proper regard to local circumstances, we think they are incapable of seeing the importance of social cohesion?
	Ten per cent of this country's schools are Catholic. There are 1,723 Catholic primary schools and 352 Catholic secondary schools. In addition, there are 17 Catholic sixth-form colleges and 156 Catholic schools in the independent sector. Those schools were established only because of the generosity and sacrifice of previous generations of Catholics, many of whom were from poor immigrant communities. My own mother, an Irish speaker from the west of Ireland, was typical of those people who gave generously to collections every week to establish parish schools in inner-city areas. Even today, in addition to many other forms of support, parishes contribute around £20 million a year towards capital costs.
	The achievements of these schools are significant: 42 per cent of Catholic schools have high value-added status and above average point scores. According to Ofsted's figures, that compares with the national average of 30 per cent for other schools. A fifth of the top performing comprehensive schools at A-level are Catholic and Ofsted says that they provide better value for money than other schools.
	Many of those schools have waiting lists of families from Catholic parishes. The logic of the amendment, if it were applied to all schools or even just to new ones, is that even where they had helped raise funds to build a new school and were keen members of the Catholic parish, they would be denied a place at the local school. Think of the resentment that that could engender. Far from encouraging community cohesion and integration, we will have sown the seeds of division.
	The Leeds Association of Catholic Head Teachers said in a letter this week:
	"The introduction of quotas would have an adverse effect on the social and ethnic diversity of our schools as the restriction of places for Catholics would, in some instances, result in children from 'poorer' backgrounds being access to Catholic education".
	It is a classic example of the law of unintended consequences. Why are we contemplating doing this? It is for the worst reasons of social engineering.
	The issue of Islamic schools is constantly raised to justify amendments like these. If we introduce over-exacting and hostile measures, those schools will simply be established in the independent sector. That point was very eloquently made by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and I agreed with him. There will be no ability there to influence things such as admissions criteria. Secondly, in the present climate, I find it hard to believe that a Muslim school will be able to fill the 25 per cent quota with non-Muslim children. This measure will have an adverse effect in dealing with the perceived problem and will simultaneously antagonise a sector which has an exemplary record. That is not a good example of well thought through public policy.
	In the long term, Catholic schools will be the most adversely affected by this approach. Such a measure is wholly unjustified. Without the imposition of externally imposed criteria, the Catholic sector has been making a huge contribution to the development of communal co-existence and responsible citizenship. Without external interference or mandatory measures, it already has significant diversity. Some 18.2 per cent of itspupils are drawn from ethnic minorities, compared with 16.7 per cent in the state sector.
	Trevor Phillips has been quoted. The chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality says,
	"when we look at the ethnic mix of schools, Catholic schools tend to be far more mixed than local authority schools".
	I was also struck when the noble Lord, Lord Baker, referred to the situation in Northern Ireland. He will have received a letter earlier this week from Anthony Spencer, director of the Pastoral Research Centre. He was the adviser on integrated education in Northern Ireland to the Government of which the noble Lord was a member. In 1984, he founded the Belfast Charitable Trust for Integrated Education, of which I have been a patron. Like him, I believe that in the sectarian circumstances of Northern Ireland, schools such as Hazelwood and Lagan College are very helpful initiatives.
	It is often forgotten that those initiatives were not secular ones; those are inter-denominational Christian schools. No compulsion was involved and no quotas invoked. In opposing the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, Mr Spencer says:
	"The situation in England has been and remains quite different. The lesson of integration in Northern Ireland is that it must be voluntary. It should be supported not imposed".
	I know from personal experience of my own children's schools that admissions there include significant numbers from other and no faith backgrounds, without outside interference or anyone telling them to do it.
	The recent report Quality and Performance:A Survey of Education in Catholic Schools convincingly demolishes many of the old hoary arguments endlessly deployed against church schools. The survey reveals that Catholic schools are socially and ethnically mixed, and may have large numbers of pupils who are not Catholic. The high standards reported by Ofsted are not confined to the academic but also encompass positive attitudes, good behaviour, respect for others and excellence in personal development. The survey noted the high degree of parental involvement in those schools and support for children's learning; it also highlighted good governance.
	If there is an issue to address about whether schools with a religious character are not promoting proper respect for our democratic institutions, pluralism and way of life, let them be subject to inspection and let Ofsted report accordingly. I strongly support the earlier remarks made in that context by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth and note, in passing, that my own children's Catholic school produced more Victoria Crosses than any other school in Britain, which hardly denotes a lack of commitment to our country and its ideals.
	Transparency and scrutiny about how schools contribute to community cohesion is not an issue which faith schools will fear, if they are true to their ethos. I note that the Catholic Education Service has made clear its support for a requirement to report on issues such as how inter-faith dialogue is experienced in a school, how other people's traditions are explained and respected and how community service is promoted. I would support an amendment to do that in the Bill.
	Ten years ago, on behalf of Liverpool John Moores University, I established a good citizenship award scheme. It operates in nearly 1,000 schools on Merseyside and in other parts of north-west England. In parenthesis, I declare the chair I hold at that university. Time and again, children from church schools have received our awards for the contribution that they make to community life. Last month, 12 children from one of our schools, the Sacred Heart in Crosby, received from Cherie Booth, QC—one of their alumni—awards for the work they have done befriending asylum-seekers. Another young recipient, Francesca D'Arcy of St Edward's College, had raised a staggering £100,000 for local hospices. Students and schools like those need no lectures from us about social responsibility.
	These amendments, including government Amendment No. 79, also introduce opt-outs from religious worship, for those in sixth forms, and from religious education. Catholic schools were established primarily to educate children of the Catholic faith, to form them as Catholics and to provide them with a well-rounded education. They encourage pupils to see all men and women as made in the image of God, and therefore of infinite worth and value. They allow the cultivation of religious and spiritual needs. Plenty of alternatives exist if parents do not want those values for their children. That there are often waiting lists demonstrates that what we have now is what parents want.
	The Government regularly lecture parents, including those of 16 to 18 year-olds, to be mindful of disciplinary and developmental issues at school which affect their children. Now, parents are to be told that this core activity, central to the identity of their child's school, will be determined by peer group pressure and argument. By incorporating a divisive opt-out into the religious ethos of the school, it drives a wedge into the heart of a school's mission and life.
	I entirely agree with John Vaughan-Shaw ofSt Edmund's College, Ware, when he states in a letter to your Lordships that,
	"to present worship as an optional extra contradicts the mission of a Catholic school and will inevitably threaten its existence".
	What effect will it have on younger pupils to see those they look up to opting out? Everyone knows that the pressures of the pack and the voices of the most dominant will often prevail. It is quite hard enough for young people to hold onto their religious beliefs without being set up against another group who have no belief. That is divisive and disruptive.
	A few days ago, I attended an act of worship in my children's school at which the sixth form were present along with the rest. It was led by a visiting priest from Zimbabwe who, in a deeply moving and inspiring address, described the depredations of the Mugabe regime and the role of the church in standing up for the rights of the oppressed. If that had been an optional extra, I wonder how many would have attended and what those who had opted out would have missed.
	Worship is part of the web and weave of the Catholic tradition; everyone who opts into Catholic schools knows this. In his memorable bookThe Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis wrote excoriating those who seek to eliminate the teaching of religious belief. He said that educators had become mere conditioners, and that,
	"in a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate, and bid the gelding be fruitful."
	These schools being attacked offer an antidote to the conditioners. We should celebrate their achievement and worth.
	To conclude, these amendments encourage noble Lords to fight the wrong battle in the wrong ditch. On Sunday, the Sunday Times reported that at least one million children in England receive second-rate education in poorly performing state schools. A report in London's Evening Standard said that English is a second language in half of London's schools. We should be tackling those issues along with the low morale in the teaching profession and the pockets of poverty and deprivation which genuinely threaten social cohesion, not undermining high-achieving faith schools whose exemplary record is one of our country's success stories.

Lord Waddington: My Lords, I will just make two short points. I find myself in broad agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Alton, particularly on Muslim schools, and cannot support my noble friend's agreement.
	Of course, I take the point that there are real dangers in Muslim children being educated in Muslim schools and living quite separately from the rest of the community. Yet I do not see how my noble friend's agreement will solve that problem. I do not believe for one moment that non-Muslim parents will queue up to send their children to Muslim schools. I fear that my noble friend envisages that children will be finding their way there when it has been in no way their parents' choice. In the present state of community relations, I am not sure that that will help in any way at all.
	So far as Catholic schools are concerned, I am not a Catholic, but Catholic parents would have every reason to complain if their children were denied the opportunity to go to the local Catholic school by making room for the children of parents who are not members of that church. A great injustice would be done, in the hope that some unquantifiable benefit would accrue to society as a whole. That is the worst sort of social engineering.

Lord Taverne: My Lords, I have put my name to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who spoke to it in a most delightful and eloquent manner. I also wish to support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. Unfortunately, I do not give quite the same reasons for supporting the amendment as have been so far advanced. I support it because I regard it as an exercise in damage limitation. I take the completely opposite view on what education should do from that of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and I am sorry to differ from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth.
	Let me explain why I think that it is wrong in principle to teach religion in schools. I start with the proposition that part of the history of civilisation has been the gradual erosion of superstition by reason and the development of respect for evidence. I believe that it should be one of the primary aims of education to teach regard for evidence, to teach children to ask questions and not to accept authority uncritically. In fact, they should learn some idea of how science works, how nature works and how to use their intelligence to find out about the world. I recognise that there are many scientists who are Christians and, because Islam is under fire, I direct my remarks principally at the teaching of the Christian religion.
	I argue that teaching any kind of religious belief depends on authority and undermines regard for evidence, and is in opposition to what a good education should provide. People may be religious because they believe in a vague numinous presence in the universe, although most Christians believe in a personal god who can physically intervene in this world, which is what faith schools teach. They teach children to pray. If praying for the welfare of others is a ritualistic way of encouraging concern for others, which also makes the person who prays feel better, well and good. I love the language of many traditional prayers. However, children are taught to pray on the assumption that their prayers may be answered and that the object of their prayers may recover from illness or some other misfortune through a god's personal response. Indeed, double-blind experiments have been done at considerable expense to see if patients in hospital who are prayed for recover faster than those who are not prayed for and—surprise, surprise—it was found that prayers had no effect.
	A belief in the efficacy of prayer as a possible cure for diseases is essentially a return to medieval superstition, when it was seen as the only hope of a cure for various illnesses. You prayed to a particular saint for a particular disease. You would pray toSt Lucy, for example, who was very beautiful and, according to one legend, avoided the lustful glances of men by plucking out her eyes, and that made her the patron saint for eye diseases.
	Christians believe in miracles. Jesus, it is claimed, performed miracles. Catholic saints qualify as saints because they perform miracles. The resurrection is a miracle, and how can the doctrine of the physical assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven be reconciled with the laws of nature? Miracles are, by definition, events in which the laws of nature have been suspended. Teaching people to believe in miracles is teaching them to ignore evidence and to believe in the supernatural. No wonder so many Christians reject the fact that animals and plants have evolved over many millions of years and turn to intelligent design or creationism to explain the world. A recent poll showed that 30 per cent of sixth formers in British schools do not understand evolution. If you are encouraged to believe in miracles, you can believe anything, including creationism.
	Roman Catholics are taught that the Pope is infallible, just as in Galilean times when the authority of the church overruled evidence. It is hardly rational to treat the authority of the Pope as infallible when he can change his mind and pronounce his predecessors wrong. Before 1861, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford has pointed out, the infallible doctrine of the Pope held that the soul only entered the embryo 40 days after conception in the case of the male foetus and 60 days after in the case of the female foetus. Since then, Popes have decreed that all abortion is murder because it has now been decreed that the soul enters the embryo at the moment of conception. Even today the Pope can change the official doctrine taught to Catholics because it seems that they may have been wrong to believe that babies who died before they were baptised go to limbo. Catholics may profess to argue on scientific grounds that stem cells from adults are more likely to cure certain diseases than embryonic stem cells, but their views are not decided by evidence—they are decided by the Pope's current decree that the destruction of a human blastocyst is murder.
	I do not object to children being taught about various religions because they are part of our cultural heritage, art, literature and music. I also accept that religion gives great comfort to many people and that many moral teachings of the churches are admirable. I accept the great contribution that churches and religious groups make to the community. I regard the sermon on the mount as a wonderful moral text which everyone should know about, but you do not have to believe in a god to teach morality.
	Let us not, however, forget the harm that religion does. It is religion—the teachings of the American evangelicals, the Pope and Islam—that prevents UN agencies distributing condoms in Africa and thereby condemns countless Africans to death from AIDS, which I regard as a crime against humanity. It is religion that has led to the poor education of women in the world at large. It has also led to the decline and international support for family planning, which, as I shall argue in a debate tomorrow, is a vital part of any effective policy to reduce poverty. As my favourite Latin poet Lucretius put it a long time ago:
	"Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum".
	It is unfashionable to quote Latin these days. Nearly a century ago when it was still in vogue, the Conservatives pretended to understand even if they did not and the Labour Benches pretended not to understand even if they did. It means, "Such crime did religion inflict upon the world".
	We should keep religion out of the classroom, as the Americans do. In this they are wise. Unfortunately they make up for that by letting religion interfere in their politics. On the whole the tradition in our politics has been, in the words of Alastair Campbell, that "we don't do God". It is a sad fact that through the promotion of faith schools, the Government are now undermining that tradition.

Lord Tombs: My Lords, first, I want to associate myself with the remarks made by my noble friend Lord Alton, who stole most of my points and made them much more eloquently than I could have done, so I am grateful to him. Since I am not going to repeat them, I am sure that noble Lords will be grateful too.
	Why do we want a quota? Many Church schools welcome those of any other faith or none. The point has been made that in Roman Catholic schools in this country—the second largest faith in terms of schooling—30 per cent of pupils are not Roman Catholic. They also have a battery of arrangements with other schools, exchanging and doing things together. The Secretary of State made the point the other day that the Roman Catholic Church is one of the most outward-looking faiths in the country and the one most associated with social cohesion.
	If the aim is to address a fractured society—I think that is what underlies the discussion—this is not the best way to do it. To interfere in state schools that are already outward looking is treading on eggs in hobnail boots. There are genuine feelings involved; there are genuine people doing very good things. A bull in a china shop is a poor simile. National and local government share the bulk of the responsibilities for our fractured society. Immigration and housing policies are two good examples of the way in which separate sects, separate groups and separate ghettoes have grown up, and they have infinitely more leverage than schools. That is where we should be putting our attention.
	All faith schools—or certainly the Christian faith schools—teach comparative religions; there is no isolation and no direct indoctrination of any kind. But quotas are blunt tools; they are national figures which do not take proper account of what is essentially a local issue. They do not take account of catchment areas—most pupils go to school in their catchment areas; they do not take account of geography; of social and economic conditions—wealth versus poor, high unemployment versus low unemployment. A blunt tool of that kind cannot, and should not, work. The risk is that we may alienate yet other groups in the community. I oppose the amendment. It is well intentioned but far too mechanistic to work.
	Finally, on a personal note, I have been distressed to hear so much anti-religious talk tonight. There is a great deal of it in the country, I know. I do not object to atheists being atheists—the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, is welcome to his beliefs as far as I am concerned—and I would like to experience a similar tolerance from the Liberal Democrat Benches.

The Lord Bishop of Newcastle: My Lords, the last thing I want to do is to make any kind of grand or grandiose claims on behalf of the Church of England, but I do want to underline that Church of England schools, by their nature and by their purpose, have certain similarities with other faith schools, of course, but also some important differences from them.
	The basic point is that Church of England schools are community schools; they are primarily neighbourhood schools. They are a part of the Church of England's continuing commitment to serve the neighbourhoods in which we are set. Ever since we began in the 19th century, Church of England schools have been serving some of the most disadvantaged and deprived areas in this land. That is a part of the responsibility that we have for the wellbeing of our society. That is why Church of England schools are still so important, not least for the reasons that the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, talked about earlier of social cohesion, community cohesion and community renewal. Let me underline that none of us will have anything to do with reinforcing any of the divisions in our society; we are at one with the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, in that respect.
	That is why, too, it is right for the Church of England to commit itself so that at least 25 per cent of the places in any new schools will be available on the basis of local priority rather than on faith priority. That means that at least 25 per cent will be made available to people from the local neighbourhood—and I underline "at least".
	In reality, all the church schools that I have had to do with in Bradford, in south London and now in the north-east of England have been local community schools. They have been distinctively Christian but they have been totally inclusive. That applies whether we are talking about first schools, primary schools, middle schools, upper schools or secondary schools. Frankly, I do not recognise Church of England schools in the way that faith schools are often talked about in the current debate.
	Let me tell your Lordships about one school in particular in the city of Newcastle. It is a Church of England secondary school, the only one that the Church of England has. Four years ago, the local authority was at the end of its tether. It had two Church secondary schools which were known as—I hate the description—"failed" schools. As a last resort, the authority asked the Church of England to combine the two schools into one and to take them over as a new Church of England school, albeit on one of the existing sites. Three years on, although we are not out of the wood by a long way, that school is now flourishing. Although the examination results do not necessarily say so, the value added to the lives of its young people over the past three years has been quite immense. I believe that it is highly significant that in the first year we began there were five young people in the sixth form; this year there are 90 and next year there will be even more.
	It is essentially about that school building confidence, self-esteem and aspiration in the lives of young people who have precious little from their home backgrounds. It is the care, nurturing and development of our children and young people educationally and socially—and, I would say, emotionally and spiritually—that matters above all else. I believe that Church of England schools—and, indeed, Church and faith schools in general which are open and inclusive—offering both the best kind of care and the best quality of education that we can, together with, yes, daily worship and excellent religious education, still offer one of the very best ways of achieving what we want for all our children.

Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, I am encouraged to follow the noble Baroness and to agree very much with her. I support the gallant efforts of my noble friend and others to struggle with the problem in Amendment No. 16.
	I am encouraged in that by a conversation with a knowledgeable, thoughtful, Muslim friend of mine, who is a newsagent in my home town. He has two daughters, one of whom is a qualified doctor and the other is studying to be a doctor. His experience of local education at home leads him to think that the amendment would be a good idea provided that it applies to all schools. That is a very important point to make. If we are to pass a provision like this to solve the problem, it must apply to all schools and to new schools in the future. I think the noble Lord, Lord Alton, sees that point, although it presents a problem which I deeply understand from his speech and from my own knowledge of Roman Catholic schools.
	Faith schools have a great deal going for them. The ethos of a school, the atmosphere—what people call the hidden curriculum of a school—is usually very strong in a faith school. My experience of Roman Catholic schools is that it is very strong there. You can tell the ethos the minute you go into a school.
	I really do not believe that there can be exclusive schools in future. One needs to look no further than the past few days' news media to see how easy it is in the name of national or religious solidarity to provoke the very conflict that we want to avoid. Young people must learn when discussion things to consider other people's viewpoint, if we are going to avoid conflict. Jack Straw, in his quiet, tactful way, was wise to raise a big subject, as he did. I am not quite so sure about the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow, who six months before the Scots parliamentary election has just announced that he advocates Scottish independence. We await results, but I do not know what is going to happen after that.
	What school should nowadays be about is beautifully described by Karen Armstrong in her recent book, The Great Transformation. Tracing the development of the great religions of the world from their origins in 1600 to 900 BC, she shows how from the beginning and today those religions at heart embody a shared purpose. All seek to promote sympathy and understanding between people. She makes one wonder if that is what our faith leaders must remember as we proceed into the future with our policies. In the conclusion, the author writes:
	"There can be no simple answers. We must learn to see things from other people's point of view. If religion is to bring light to our broken world we need ... to go in search of the lost heart, the spirit of compassion that lies at the heart of all our traditions".
	I believe that my noble friend Lord Baker's amendment would help young people to do that.
	There are many problems that will have to be overcome, because if we are to shape a future in which our young people can compete in the modern world, we cannot have exclusive schools.

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood: My Lords, gales of belief have been blowing around this Chamber tonight—the beliefs of those who are atheists and Roman Catholics and even a moderate wind from the Anglican Benches. It seems rather feeble then to say that one is an agnostic but, feeble as I am, that does not mean that I do not believe anything. It means that I share beliefs with many people.
	Like all noble Lords, I believe in a tolerant society in which an attempt is made to understand the position of other people and their formal cultural influences. I believe in a society in which freedom of speech and thought and teaching children to ask awkward questions, be it about religion or science or whatever, are all tremendously important. Most of all, in tonight's context, I believe, like all noble Lords, in an inclusive society. No one has preached the cause of exclusion, nor would I expect that in this place. The question is one of ways and means and how we capture that in our education system.
	To make one point in passing, I think there has been a confusion in the debate between religious worship and religious education in schools. Government Amendment No. 79 gets it just about right on religious worship. In relation to religious education, I would resist any attempt to diminish its place in schools. Indeed, if our political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic knew more about religion—the Islamic religion and the Christian religion and the way in which extremes can show themselves in those religions—we would be in a better position now than we are in all sorts of other contexts.
	I also believe in the importance of a remark by David Hume, which I have quoted before in this place. He said:
	"Whereas the mistakes in philosophy are merely ridiculous"—
	I speak as a philosopher, noble Lords will understand—
	"those in religion are dangerous".
	I think we all agree to that, because we know that whatever form of religion we espouse or reject, there are dangerous extreme forms. The question is how we ensure that our school system is moving in the right direction. That is all we will do in this Bill; we will not change the situation radically forever, but we can move it continually in the right direction.
	I do not support the notion of quotas, as I do not think that they would work. The reasons for that have been given; I would repeat them but it is too late. However, I propose an alternative way in which to attempt to deal with the issue and the dangers of religion and what will be initially schools that recruit from a particular religious community—and I look to the Anglican example here. It is to use our inspection system thoroughly and radically and for Ministers to back up the judgments that will come from that inspection system.
	Ofsted has the responsibility to report on the ethos of a school. These issues are all partly to do with the ethos of a school and the direction in which it moves. It has to report on the social, moral, spiritual and cultural education provided for pupils in schools. Again, all these are fundamental to the direction in which we should be moving. Of course now we have citizenship taught in schools. All that comes within these three bands. If instructions to inspectors were strengthened and made more precise so that these areas were inspected clearly and certainly in the case of all faith schools, with a punctiliousness that we would all benefit from, I would look to Ministers to be willing to support the tough judgments that will come up in some places and act on them. There will be tough judgments to make and Ministers will have to stand firm against a press campaign and a community campaign—and that applies to Christian schools as well as Muslim schools and Jewish schools. An amendment could be brought forward at Third Reading, if that were thought to be worthwhile.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, it is a pity that the Minister's amendment was not grouped separately so that we could have a discussion on these matters without becoming involved in all the other weighty discussions which have preceded it. The amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, is distinct from all the others in that it is concerned with a fundamental issue of human rights, whereas whether you have 25 per cent of the places at a faith school allocated to people who do not belong to that religion is a matter of expediency. However, I agree with all those who have said that we need to consider very carefully how to avoid the divisiveness that may arise in our society through exclusive attendance at faith schools of only members of that religion. However, that is another argument. We are concerned here with the human rights of pupils whether to attend acts of collective worship or lessons of religious education.
	I am delighted to see the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth back with us, although I, too, beg to differ with him on this matter. I say to him that it is not a question of having no religious education at all. That is not what the amendment says. It is proposed that only when the child reaches 16, or attains the sixth form, should he or she have a right to opt out of religious education. My youngest son took his GCSEs at 15. He took religious education as part of that course. If this amendment had been in force at the time, it would have made no difference whatever to his appreciation of the religious education which that school offered because he would already have received, in his opinion, all that was necessary of such education by the time he took his GCSEs. He did not go on to study RE at A-level, which was his absolute right. It should be the right of any child, as the noble Baroness said.
	The noble Baroness is to be particularly congratulated on her deployment of the case to which the JCHR alerted us only at the end of last week. That in turn involved some very rapid footwork by the committee working during the Recess to pick up the fact that the Government's amendment, giving a sixth-form pupil the right to be excused attendance at religious worship, is only a quarter of a human rights loaf, as the noble Baroness has explained.
	Following amendments by my noble friend Lady Walmsley in Committee, the Government sent out a consultation document on 10 August asking recipients to respond by 25 August, breaking the normal rule of consultations that six weeks are allowed for reply. An explanation should have been given for the shorter timescale, but was not, although I understand from the Government that this was not a normal consultation at all but simply a request for views to be expressed by those immediately concerned. I should like to know who was immediately concerned. On the previous amendment my noble friend mentioned the right of children to express opinions. Did the Minister obtain the opinions of any children, or of organisations representing children? We should hear what they had to say.
	It was even more unfortunate that although the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said in response to my noble friend in Committee on 18 July that he would encapsulate "most of the spirit" of my noble friend's amendments in the amendment that he would propose, the consultation document referred only to half of it, limiting itself to the question of attendance at collective acts of worship and leaving out altogether any reference to religious education. The noble Lord's explanation for that in a letter to the executive director of the National Secular Society was,
	"that there is a proper distinction to be drawn between participation in religious worship and attendance at religious education lessons on the grounds of the nature of those activities".
	He did not go on to explain the difference in the nature of those two activities. Even if there is such a distinction, as the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, has explained, the rights of parents to opt out of both on behalf of their children are the same, or they are similar if not identical. If there is a proper distinction to be drawn in this legislation, would it not have been right to explain in the consultation document how the Government saw it and get the views of the consultees rather than giving the impression that only the attendance at religious worship had been entered into in Committee, and that there had been no reference to the question of attendance at RE lessons?
	I think that the Government were at fault in not expanding the consultation to include all the matters dealt with in the amendments in that group in Committee. The Minister's excuse for not doing so was that my noble friend did not actually refer to this issue in Committee. That is disingenuous. As my noble friend explained, that was a monster group of amendments, and she would have been unpopular if she had spoken to every single one.
	In tabling their amendments, the Government concede that a sixth-form pupil of whatever age is competent to decide whether to attend collective worship. As the noble Baroness has explained, the JCHR says that it is a denial of the rights of the child under both the ECHR and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to say that she can withdraw from collective worship but not from compulsory RE if she is of sufficient maturity, intelligence and understanding. If she is accepted as having reached that standard for the first, it follows that she is for the second purpose as well. The Government's position is illogical in arguing that the parents ought to step aside on worship but to continue to decide for the child on RE. The two must go together, and the test for both must be the same.
	The JCHR suggests that schools should apply the Gillick test, under which the High Court ruled that a girl of whatever age had the legal capacity to consent to medical examination and treatment, including contraceptives, if she had sufficient maturity and intelligence to understand the nature and implications of the proposed treatment. It says that schools are familiar with this concept and could be provided with guidance on how to apply it in the case of religious worship and RE. However, to avoid what I see as being unnecessary bureaucracy, and because the attainment of the age of 16 and reaching sixth form are objective tests that the Government recognise in their own amendment, it is appropriate to apply them in this context but with the difference that if either of them is satisfied the exercise of choice is triggered. Otherwise, 16 year-olds will be divided into sheep and goats; those who go to a decent school will qualify because they have reached sixth form by that time, while the 44 per cent of pupils who do not achieve five good GCSEs by age 16, as the noble Lord writes in an article in today's Guardian, will be disqualified.
	I agree with the JCHR that it is valuable for children to learn about spiritual and moral issues but, as it adds, there is no guarantee that in a particular school the way RE is taught may not infringe the pupil's right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. With the growth of faith schools, about which our Prime Minister is so enthusiastic even though it is an intrinsically divisive idea which is likely to cause untold harm, it is vital that children should be able to protect themselves. My noble friend and others have referred to the UK Government's obligation to report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2007. They will be asked on that occasion whether they have sought the views of children on these proposals and why, if that is the case, they did not accept the weighty advice of the JCHR.

Lord Elton: My Lords, I shall be brief because it is high time the right reverend Prelate had a break from this, and he has to be here until the end. My noble friend Lord Waddington drew attention to one danger of my noble friend Lord Baker's amendment: that it would not work. He left out another almost equally important danger: that it has turned Amendment No. 104 into a sideshow. It is actually a very important amendment. Not only does it address the question of school assembly, breaking it up so that it no longer becomes an assembly of the whole school, making it optional and taking out the religious content, but it repeals Schedule 20 to the 1988 Act. The schedule embodies the phrase "wholly or broadly Christian", which was put on the statute book in 1988 after lengthy deliberation by your Lordships in a campaign led by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, who alas is not here tonight. To reverse that with a thinning House late at night would be a tragedy.
	The only other comment that I will make is to reinforce the remarks of those who say that the study of religion is more important than it has been for a very long time. The age when children are reaching maturity is probably the most important time for them to become aware of it, look at it rationally and not be brainwashed, and that is the role of RE in schools these days.
	I will not reply to tirade of the noble Lord, Lord Taverne—who is not in his place but I shall address him in his absence—though one came across most of it teaching in the sixth form, and indeed the fifth form, but I will say simply that those who have lived it are very grateful that they learnt it.

Lord Dearing: My Lords, I would like, if I might, to give a practical welcome to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth saying, "Three cheers for Amendment No. 9". I think it is the only non-controversial thing that has been said tonight. I support it because I took a view earlier that it was important that a school improvement partner should be en rapport with the governing body.
	Amendment No. 16, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, is a very constructive, well intended approach to a major issue: the well-being of society and its coherence. I do not think that we can have this debate without hearing the Muslim voice, and I have not heard it tonight. That is what underlies this debate. We cannot bring it to a conclusion without listening respectfully to the views of the Muslim community.
	If I may recall history imperfectly, at one time Catholic schools were looked on with considerable suspicion. I think I remember the opposition to Pope on the rates. No one now thinks of Catholic schools as divisive in our society. The right reverend Prelate said that church communities were at different stages of development. It is right that the Church of England as the national church should see itself as serving the whole nation to an extent that I would not expect of other churches.
	As I read the letter of the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Birmingham, the Roman Church accepts that it has an obligation to address this issue, although it does not accept the noble Lord's approach. It is saying that its inspections shall look at the contribution of Roman Catholic schools to social cohesion and that the outcome should be public. The archbishop lists a dozen criteria. That was what the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, said was the way to test whether a school was making that contribution.
	I was quoted twice in this debate and I listened fearfully to what I had said. This time I quote without fear. Speaking in a debate on "Churches and Cities" on 19 May, I said:
	"Faith schools have a special responsibility not to be isolationist but to adopt an ethos of positive commitment, goodwill and respect towards other faiths, and to proactively seek opportunities to engage with the schools of other faiths or, where there are none locally, with community schools, which serve a large number of other faiths".—[Official Report, 19/5/06; col. 548.]
	So I believe that there is an alternative route that addresses the major problem that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, has in mind.
	I worry whether the noble Lord's well intentioned amendment will be seen by some of our absent Muslim community, perhaps many of them, as ill-intentioned—innocent but nevertheless interpreted in that way. What matters is how people interpret things in the very sensitive situation in which we find ourselves. I am fearful that the amendment will be misinterpreted.
	Once upon a time, I led a large corporation. When negotiating with a guy called Alan Johnson, now the Secretary of State for Education, who was one of the trade union leaders, I learnt a little rule, although I did not tell him about it at the time: never drive the other side into a corner from which there is no escape, because all they can do is fight. I am worried that we may be driving them. We want to hear what that community have to say, because they know the problem and what contribution they want to make to addressing it. We should find ways of enabling them to make that contribution, perhaps in the way that the Roman Catholic Church is doing so by being open to inspection and so on.
	I respect the noble Lord's motives, but I fear that they could be misinterpreted and do damage. There are other ways, and whichever way we go, we must not drive people into a corner of antagonism and hostility. We have serious problems enough.

Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, this has been a fascinating, wide-ranging and well informed debate that confirms the distinguished reputation of your Lordships' House. I believe that the quality of the debate in this House is at its highest when noble Lords contemplate those issues that are the most challenging.
	I begin by referring to the amendment tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth. I fear that it has been entirely forgotten because of the other amendments. I remind noble Lords that it concerns school improvement partners having to understand fully the religious character of a school. I suggest that that is a modest amendment which deserves support.
	Turning to the issue raised by my noble friend Lord Baker, this is a matter of great importance, not only to many noble Lords, but also to those individuals whose lives will be shaped by the choices that we make today. It is for those individuals that the Bill has been created and it is for them that these Benches support it. Our reasons have been much publicised in your Lordships' House and in another place. The most important is our whole-hearted endorsement of the creation of greater choice of schools for parents. The provision of a good choice of schools for parents and children is the driving principle of the Bill, but I fear that this amendment could have the opposite outcome.
	I come from a standpoint that does not fear the existence of strongly held faith or faith schools. I believe that the moral principles and teachings of great religious faiths can provide the moral compass that our society so often lacks. I feel confident that many noble Lords on all Benches agree. I do not think that the leaders of our faiths should feel that they have to apologise for the existence of faith schools or underplay their many fantastic achievements. We should encourage and support such schools, which our education system has done since 1944.
	I say that because in debating this topic, there is a danger of overlooking the great contribution that so many of our faith schools make to excellence in education in this country. That has been touched on by many noble Lords. In recent days and weeks, many members of faith groups have said that faith in schools can be a great driver of the consideration, tolerance and positive outlook that is so important to the success of social cohesion. All noble Lords have agreed on the subject of inclusion, which was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood. The real moral hazard in our society is not the existence of teachers with faith and principles; it is the existence of moral relativists for whom anything is as valid as anything else.
	The amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Baker would, I fear, require new schools with a religious character to accept a centralised quota of25 per cent of pupils from other faiths in order to receive state funding. I say, "I fear", because I am concerned that that quota would not work. My noble friend said that his amendment follows on from the Church of England's policy but applies it to other schools. The Church of England reserves 25 per cent of pupil places for children of a different faith, but it does not close those places off if they are not applied for by pupils of a different faith. There is no compulsion in the Church of England's position; rather, there is an allowance for children of other faiths or none. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth explained, the places would not be left empty.
	In supporting the Church of England's stance on this issue, I should add that the right honourable David Cameron MP has made it clear that he wants to see similar initiatives by other faith schools, not as a matter of uniform national rules, but of social responsibility. I fear that the top-down approach of the imposition of a quota would upset the careful balance achieved by the Church of England and would dissuade other faith communities from following suit.
	Parents who want their children to go to a school with a religious character could find their application being turned away on the grounds of the quota. Equally, those who do not wish for their children to attend such a school could find their choices limited by the fact that such a quota would affect their applications to other local schools, should they happen to live near a school with a religious character. I do not believe that my noble friend seeks any such effect. Indeed, I applaud the principle of his amendment. I understand that its driving force is a sincere and strongly held desire to achieve integration, inclusion and greater communication within different community groups.
	The answer is not to create national rules that will discourage new faith-based institutions as part of the state system; it is to draw more of those institutions into the state system where they will teach the broad span of the curriculum and be subject to the same controls as all other schools. While I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Baker for raising this issue, and I applaud his courage in doing so, I am concerned about the methodology.
	I am at an impasse. We have before us the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Baker, but I understand that the Minister is proposing to table an alternative amendment at Third Reading. I believe that there is a strong case for encouraging and providing the pathways for local communities to embrace social cohesion of their own volition and not imposing rigid central structures. But I regret that such compromises are being introduced so late in the stages of the Bill, and that there will be little opportunity to debate them.
	However, I understand the pressures placed on the Minister by the re-tabling of my noble friend's amendment, even after the debate in Committee. I understand that he has felt the need to produce proposals with very little time. I am sure that had he anticipated the great interest surrounding the amendment, an alternative could have been available in your Lordships' House today. I await with great interest the details of the noble Lord's proposition.
	I hope that the Minister will strike the right balance; that he will employ legislation that does not impose solutions from the top down, but which enables local authorities to take responsibility from the bottom up. I look forward to measures that instead of imposing one size fits all legislation, will encourage local communities—the bedrock of society—to use their commissioning role to foster integration and interaction through legislation that gives them the freedom to adapt to and grow with the people who make up those communities.
	In speaking to other amendments, I will try to be extremely brief. These amendments require some serious consideration. Given that the key factor that drives extremism is isolation, we, as legislators, should be searching for ways to develop a sense of belonging and a sense of community in our young people. How do you promote leadership and develop an ethos in a school unless you have opportunities to involve each pupil on common ground and, if space allows, as one group?
	I understand the arguments proposed this evening for why collective worship should no longer be mandatory for sixth formers, and why pupils should be allowed to opt out of religious education. But while I have listened to the arguments, I do not accept them and do not support the amendments. Indeed, I find the juxtaposition of the Government's amendment and Amendment No. 104 with that of my noble friend Lord Baker rather strange. On the one hand we are seeking to encourage integration of children of different faiths, and then we have these other amendments—Amendment Nos. 79 and 104 et al—that would allow children to withdraw from worship and withdraw from religious teaching. Surely, we should be encouraging teaching of different faiths in order to support genuine integration. We should listen to the wise words of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth—and how glad we are to hear from him tonight.
	I want to say something that is extremely important regarding religious worship, and I think that we should be grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Turner and Lady Massey, for raising an issue which deserves our attention. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, said that a large percentage of children do not actually take part in daily worship as required by the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. Section 70 of the Act sets out the requirements in relation to collective worship. I am not convinced that that is happening. I ask the Minister to tell us whether each day pupils take part in an act of collective worship.
	I raise the matter particularly because some of the wording of Amendment No. 104 deserves our attention and, in spirit, our support. The amendment states:
	"Each pupil in attendance at a community, foundation or voluntary school shall on each school day take part in an assembly, which shall further his spiritual, moral, social and cultural education".
	That is hugely important. It is about bringing pupils together. I mentioned earlier the concern that exclusion creates isolation. More than ever today I think that we should continue with worship, and we should continue with educational training up to the age of 18, whatever forms and manners that might take. But as important is that schools should be encouraged to have an assembly so that pupils are given a sense of belonging.
	I have thought about this a great deal. Indeed, only this morning, I asked a group of people in east Croydon, a number of whom are ex-teachers and school inspectors, whether, in their experience, we should expect our schools at all stages to have some form of regular assembly. The answer was overwhelming. It was unanimous.
	Throughout all walks of life, in all activities, people, whether working with children, in the police or in business, have opportunities to come together as a team, as one. The benefits are invaluable. Why not use the assembly as an opportunity not only to inform but enthuse children and inspire them in a moral and social education? That is something that we should all support.
	Although I do not support government Amendment No. 79 or the amendments tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey and Lady Turner, it is right to embrace the need for a school assembly to further the spiritual, moral, social and cultural education of our children.

The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth: My Lords, it is a great pleasure for me to say that I had a good lunch, and look forward to having a good dinner. I am grateful to your Lordships for your good wishes on my temporary return during a gap in treatment. I assure your Lordships that I will be back. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Baker, for my poor maths. When I was a Guildford rector the treasurer told me, after a few months, "Don't bother to add up your monthly expenses cheque, Kenneth—you always get it wrong".
	This has been a rich and varied debate that could go on and on for hours. I want to touch very briefly on four aspects of it. First, I remain entirely sceptical about the amendment in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Baker, Lord Skidelsky and Lord Taverne, for reasons that I have already given that are shared by other people around your Lordships' House, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Buscombe. I hope that the kind of signals given by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, to other noble Lords who do not share that view will pacify them and contribute to further debate.
	I echo the words used earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, that this is only part of the picture. Faith schools cannot possibly carry the weight of all our social issues and problems. It was good to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on Roman Catholic schools, and from the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, in his knockabout speech. We may disagree on faith and reason, but the Pope's speech in Regensburg—hijacked because he opened his mouth in a particular Byzantine direction—was really about a new deal on faith and reason in the West. Whatever our religious views in the post-modern world, that provides many of us with much food for thought.
	When I was a small boy, I learned most of my theology from an old priest who was a chaplain in the trenches, and whose theology was formed by that experience. He once said to me, "The purpose of theology is to prevent religion degenerating into superstition"—words that the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, at whose feet I sat many years ago in Manchester University, might welcome and even approve.
	However, there has been a slight air of unreality in parts of tonight's debate about faith schools. There are 4,700 Church of England schools, while there are 35 Jewish schools, six Muslim-maintained schools and 100 independent Muslim schools that could become maintained—with many of all those oversubscribed—so we are not comparing like with like. Perhaps I may say, without intending to be patronising, that we need to handle minority faith communities with a bit of care and, dare I say, love.
	Secondly, I welcome the government amendment on staff at foundation or voluntary schools with religious character—that is easy. Thirdly, collective worship has been the Aunt Sally of tonight's discussion. As I think the Minister said, the current provision is to have half Christian and half other faiths in community schools. What an enrichment that would be. It would have been an enrichment for the school that I attended if half the acts of worship had been of other faiths. I would have learnt so much more than simply having conversations with the little lad sitting next to me who was from the local Jewish community.
	I suppose that I would be slightly sceptical at this slip from worship to spiritual, moral assembly. It seems that if you define worship in the broadest sense, it is about contemplating the mystery of life and the use of silence in a very noisy world. I find in liturgy that it is children who can be quiet and parents who cannot. This spiritual, moral assembly may become rather moralistic. We may have to come back to collective worship in a proper debate. Perhaps I may stick my neck out slightly and quote from a conversation that I had with the Secretary of State in the summer. We talked about collective worship and I gave him a gentle warning that if we do not grasp it, it runs the risk of becoming like the blasphemy law: enshrined in statute, seldom invoked and almost universally misunderstood.
	To gently answer the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, yes, religion does not have exclusive rights on the grammar of values, but it is remarkably alive and kicking. To echo the words of my friend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle, I do not recognise the religious life of this country portrayed in much public discussion. According to the statistics of the 2001 census, more than 71 per cent of the population signed up to Christianity in the broad sense and the second-largest faith group are the Muslims at 3.9 per cent, which is not quite how it is often portrayed. I am not using those statistics in a triumphalistic way, but rather in a world where religion is back on the map and people want to study it at schools and in universities. The old secularist approach will not work any more.
	I cannot quite believe that this debate began nearly three hours ago. I am sometimes accused of innocence and this began with a very innocent amendment on school improvement partners. Years ago, a group of us were swapping epitaphs and the eyes of the group turned to me. I said that I would like as my epitaph: be cunning as serpents, yet innocent as doves. The retired bishop said, "Well, Kenneth, you certainly passed the first test".
	Finally, I welcome the reassurances given on school improvement partners. With all the humility that I can muster just before nine o'clock with a rumbling stomach, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Lord Truscott: rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what progress has been made on implementing the Ministry of Defence's defence industrial strategy.
	My Lords, I should like to declare an interest as an associate fellow of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies; however, I stress that I am of course not speaking on behalf of the institute or representing its views in any way. I touched on this subject during the Armed Forces debate in your Lordships' House last June, initiated by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Inge. Nevertheless I believe that the timing, if not the hour, of this Question is apposite, given that the anniversary of the publication of the defence industrial strategy (DIS) White Paper will soon be upon us. Much has happened since its publication last December, and I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will welcome this opportunity to update your Lordships on the progress made so far in implementing the strategy. He has rightly been widely lauded as its architect.
	I do not wish to rehearse the points I made in the debate last June. The MoD's defence industrial strategy and its subsequent implementation strategy have clearly set out a blueprint for delivering affordable defence capability which will at the same time secure the future for the UK's defence industrial base. The DIS recognises not only the important role of the defence industry in delivering capability but also that industry must change to meet the evolving demands of our Armed Forces and the current£16 billion procurement budget. Britain's forces face a multitude of challenges in today's world and are doing their job magnificently, but Her Majesty's Government must ensure they have the equipment and training to meet threats they may face in 20 to30 years' time. It is a daunting and complex task.
	My noble friend on the Front Bench has made an impressive start with the DIS. The White Paper and his personal commitment to its speedy implementation have received warm praise from industry. As he said at Farnborough last July, there have already been concrete, practical results following on from the DIS. There has been the appointment of the MoD's commercial director, which should enhance the ministry's commercial awareness and understanding. The McKane review, Enabling Acquisition Change, looking at through-life capability management, has been adopted by Ministers. The DPA and DLO are to be merged to create one procurement and support organisation, which incidentally will save £200 million. Implementation teams have been established, and a £1 billion strategic partnering arrangement has been signed with Augusta Westland to produce the future Lynx helicopter. In the armoured fighting vehicles sector, a partnering agreement has been agreed with BAE Land Systems.
	A "Team Complex Weapons" has been created, with a number of planned programmes in the pipeline. The upgraded Harrier GR9 aircraft has entered service with the Royal Navy, on cost and on time. The MoD has also signed a five-year support agreement with VT Shipbuilding to maintain HMS "Clyde", the first ship to be built at Portsmouth's naval base in nearly four decades.
	These are all impressive achievements, but like my noble friend we are anxious to hear of yet more progress. The Minister has said that he hopes for a memorandum of understanding signature by the end of the year regarding the necessary transfer of technology before the purchase of the Joint Strike Fighter goes ahead. Can he update your Lordships' House further on this point when he sums up the debate later?
	Noble Lords will be aware of the concerns expressed of late that the DIS is perhaps overambitious in some respects, particularly in its implementation timetable, the necessary change in behaviour required on all sides and the question of affordability. I hope that the MoD will be able to allay these fears when the Minister responds. To be specific, I would like to refer to RUSI's recently published report on industry responses to the DIS. Although the DIS is seen as a very positive initiative, there was some scepticism about whether the Treasury would make the necessary money available for the MoD's desired capabilities and equipment plan. Her Majesty's Government must ensure that the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review supports the DIS's aims, especially since through-life capability management requires the commitment of funds over long periods, allowing for future upgrades.
	Retaining appropriate sovereignty in vital sectors of the defence industrial base may well involve a premium, and the MoD must be clear about what capabilities and knowledge will be preserved onshore. More worryingly, the Royal United Services Institute report identified that commitment to the implementation of the DIS is not embedded at all levels and across all organisations within the MoD.
	There is a strong case for the development of closer working relationships between civil servants in the ministry and their industrial partners, for example by bringing industry and MoD IPT teams together at the beginning of a programme and through joint training and more staff exchanges.
	Some disappointment has been expressed about the slow pace of industrial consolidation in the maritime sector and the development of the MoD's maritime industrial strategy. Can the Minister comment on this—he has himself expressed disappointment—and on the CVF future carriers project, including how the maritime industrial strategy might impact on the Type 45 and future Submarine programmes? I think we are entitled to know whether the MoD has a workable plan for safeguarding this country's maritime capability. Some fears have been expressed that future hulls may be built abroad, a prospect alluded to in the DIS White Paper.
	The issue of R&T spending has been raised in a number of quarters, including the Defence Select Committee in another place. The Minister was kind enough to tell me in last June's debate that the MoD planned for the research budget to rise in line with inflation over the next four years. A recent study found that of 10 leading nations, the UK is second only to the US on the military equipment quality curve. But the fact remains that the MoD invested $4.7 billion on defence R&T in 2004 whereasthe United States research spending alone reached $77.6 billion in the same year. UK private sector aerospace and defence research investment has barely kept up with inflation.
	Today we had the publication of a weighty document, the ministry's defence technology strategy, which I have here—I can see it on the Benches opposite as well. It contains almost 200 pages of interesting material, together with a list of 200 technologies and 2,000 sub-technologies which the MoD wants to nurture. I think some questions arise from the publication of the strategy and, as we are discussing the defence industrial strategy, perhaps the DTS would require a debate of its own.
	However, it will be interesting to quote from one section of the report. On page 162, which looks at the joint MoD and industry framework for investment, paragraph C4.2 states:
	"Against this background, the DTS is affordable provided both MOD and industry invest together, but there is much work needed on this ... The next step is for MOD with industry to agree the principles of joint funding via the National Defence Industry Council".
	I think we are entitled to ask the Minister how the MoD in practice will achieve an increase in investment from industry in the defence technology strategy, and how the technologies outlined in the strategy will be developed. In short, where will the funding come from to achieve the aims in the strategy?
	I look forward to the Minister's response. I can assure him that I for one stand full-square behind the aims of the defence industrial strategy, which is designed to give our Armed Forces the best possible kit, on time and at reasonable cost to British taxpayers, while preserving appropriate technological sovereignty and a vital and thriving UK industrial base.

Lord Jones: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Truscott for this timely debate and for his informed comments. I am glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Levene of Portsoken, who carries to these subjects an immense authority that I cannot match.
	The British economy needs the defence industrial strategy to succeed. There is not much manufacturing industry remaining in our country, not least those few manufacturing industries still awash with skills, training and leading edge high technological achievement. Moreover, if our defence industry prospers, then parallel, allied and dependent commercial industrial projects will remain viable. A case in point is EADS in Europe, a huge defence industry concern across Europe and the parent company of the Airbus business which has nationally important production centres in Britain, not least in my own country of Wales.
	Will my noble friend the Minister indicate that the A400M military transport will go forward into production with the UK order of 25 aircraft? Where does the A400M stand now in EADS' order of priority? I say that in the knowledge that Airbus UK has a big interest in that. Will my noble friend report on the prospects of EADS manufacturing the Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft? This will be the largest ever MoD PFI project should EADS carry the day with its Airbus A320 modified aircraft.
	But tonight—I declare my interest—my great concern is for the workforce at the Welsh production centre in Broughton, North Wales. There in Flintshire there are 6,500 plane makers. Many have been engaged in making the wings of the A380 superjumbo. They are just about the finest aerospace workforce in the world. That is my belief although I am biased as I still live there. That workforce wants EADS to move in a direction where there is no political interference. They are not responsible for the delays in A380 production. They know that Britain is a multi million pound customer of EADS. They know that the British aerospace industry is Britain's last remaining large-scale skills-based manufacturing industry, employing tens of thousands. Our industry earns annually billions of pounds for our nation through its exports. My own longstanding personal knowledge of the 6,500 strong Broughton workforce is that they have delivered on every challenge for EADS, BAE and Airbus. I want them to continue to produce high tech, world class wings free of the pressures of EADS boardroom crises. I want that for the prosperity of our nation and particularly for my own country of Wales.
	In January 2005 I was present at the A380 superjumbo rollout in Toulouse. I saw the President of France, the Chancellor of Germany and the British and Spanish Prime Ministers. Each spoke with pride and passionate conviction about one of their biggest ever investments. That was a moment of European unity and supreme optimism before 4,000 aerospace engineers, technicians and managers. Those national European leaders hailed the most successful aircraft manufacturer in the world. But some 20 months later the company is in massive disarray and is apparently fighting, if not for its life, certainly for its credibility. Tens of thousands of employees throughout Europe, particularly in our country, have an interest in the situation getting better.
	I ask my noble friend the Minister to work hard, as he always does, to dissipate the tensions between France and Germany and, as we are a big customer of EADS, to seek to develop better corporate governance so as to shore up its position in the heart of Europe as a global commercial and defence company.
	Another look back; as long ago as 1973 I was present in Toulouse at the first rollout of the first Airbus and the first Concorde on the very same day. It was a magnificent and historic day in European aerospace history. The British Minister, who spoke under a cloudless sky in sight of the glistening snows of the Pyrenees, was the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, who has already been referred to. He spoke effectively, and he represented all those hopes for aerospace and manufacturing in Europe. But now, I ask my noble friend to help to knock EADS into shape, to revitalise Airbus, and to give the Welsh wing-makers of Broughton in Flintshire fresh heart and some certain guarantees.

Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde: My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Truscott for securing this debate this evening, on an issue that has had a lot of coverage over the past 12 months, including a report that attracted a lot of complimentary statements. The Minister has been complimented this evening already, and I will not add to that. I am sure that he is quite pleased at the response that he has had. I will just say that when we had the defence industrial strategy review last year, most of us recognised running through it the thread of a real hard-nosed commercial management approach, which was very welcome. It was a very important development in our strategy. It is true, as other noble Lords have said, that this sector has in it some of our most highly-skilled workers. It is a sector that we are very good at, and which attracts good engineers and good skills of different types. I say to my noble friend Lord Jones that I have not been to Broughton, but I have been to Filton in Bristol and seen the work that people are doing there.
	The aim of the industrial strategy was an engagement with the industrial base of this country to meet the Armed Forces equipment requirements on time and at best value. That is a laudable aim, which has never been captured over many years of seeking to do just that. I expect tonight, 10 months after the strategy was published, that the Minister will probably report varying progress. I would be amazed if there were not certain tensions in the MoD and frustrations at perhaps not making some of the progress that had been expected. That is life and that happens. The important thing is that we do not let go of the intentions of the industrial strategy.
	One of the areas is the consolidation of the naval sector, including the important discussions that are taking place—although the decision has been taken—on the new carrier for the Navy. We still have not got to the gateway process on that. That is a very important step, and I am sure that causes as much frustration in the MoD as it does to those of us outside it who are following it very closely. I read in the press at the weekend about talks between BAE and VT about possibly coming together. It will be interesting to hear from the Minister if he has any details on that.
	I gather that there is also some concern in the sector at the fragility of the nuclear-powered submarine industrial base. Where are we going on that and what is the future of it? The merger of the Defence Procurement Agency and the Defence Logistics Organisation has already been welcomed this evening, many years late though the noble Lord, Lord Levene, may feel it is. It is welcome, and it is the right thing to happen, but they are two very different organisations. They are culturally very different indeed. I seek an assurance from the Minister that we will not be faced with what I call decision blight in the period of the two organisations coming together. That is the worst thing that could happen.
	The Joint Strike Fighter is an issue that keeps coming up, and will rightly do so until the issue of transfer of technology from the United States is concluded. I am aware that the Minister put up a robust performance before the Senate committee in the US, and that was very welcome. I just hope that the outcome ensures that when we have the Joint Strike Fighter and it needs attention, the work can be carried out by our technicians here and that we get the transfer of the technology that we need.
	The defence industrial strategy specifically mentions autonomous air vehicles. Earlier this year, I and a number of noble Lords visited BAE Systems at Warton, where we saw some of the innovative work being done there. This is certainly an area of great innovation and has great promise. But will the MoD will support that type of work and, if so, how? Both progress on the Joint Strike Fighter and the autonomous air vehicle impact directly on the ability to sustain a fixed-wing aerospace capability; they are interdependent and we are looking at the next stages of technology.
	Finally, the FRES system is in the defence industrial strategy. It has stalled over a number of years and if I was talking in other circles, I would ask: does it still have legs? Is it still a reality? It is there in the industrial strategy, but I am not sure whether any progress has been made. Has the MoD yet reached a decision on its requirement and acquisition strategy—two important aspects in regard to FRES? My noble friend the Minister will be aware that the issue comes up regularly in questions asked at our meetings with him at the House of Lords Defence Group, which I chair.
	It is good that we actually have a strategy that we can discuss, because we did not have one before last year. It is good that we have a robust strategy about our country's industrial base, with our country's skills and technologies involved in it. It is a mighty challenging exercise that is at the forefront of technology in so many areas of our lives. I wish the industrial strategy well and I thank the Minister for the work that has taken place in the past 12 months, but it would be good to hear an update on some of the issues that are exercising many people's thinking.

Lord Garden: My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, for arranging this short debate on the important topic of the defence industrial strategy. I declare an interest as a member of a small group of defence specialists known as the RUSI Acquisition Focus. We have taken as our task to follow the DIS and its implementation closely. When we think it is helpful, we publish reports on various aspects as they happen.
	The first report from the RUSI Acquisition Focus concluded:
	"Implementation is the key. It needs to change the fundamentals, particularly culture and behaviours in both industry and MoD, but however worthy the aims of the initiative, it will fail, as the promising Smart Acquisition initiative failed, unless there is strong commitment and leadership from the top over an extended period".
	As we have heard from your Lordships tonight and in the past, we think that we have someone who can give that commitment and leadership from the top. The question is whether it can be over an extended period.
	As I opened the now 10 month-old defence industrial strategy White Paper, I turned again to the photo gallery at the front of all the signatories from the Ministry of Defence, the DTI and the Treasury—all the Ministers who signed up to the strategy. I have to tell the noble Lord that he is the only one still in the same job 10 months later. That is more than a cheap shot about turbulence in Government. It is important that there is continuity for the introduction of this complex and long-term initiative. The problem of turbulence in posts and keeping engaged people who know what is going on is also true at the lower levels. Has the Minister had any success in reducing the personnel turnover within his area of management?
	When I responded in your Lordships' House on15 December 2005 to the Statement which launched the defence industrial strategy, I said that I welcomed,
	"the strategy's clear set of priorities; number one: the operational capability and getting the technology to do the job; and number two: value for money".—[Official Report, 15/12/05; col. 1411.]
	It is against those criteria that we must keep judging progress. As the noble Baroness, Lady Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde, said, it has been going only a fairly short time in which to judge progress. We cannot expect to see great changes and there will be undoubted tensions over how it develops. Given that we are in a co-operative mood this evening, perhaps the Minister will share with us in his reply the areas that he thinks are moving less fast than he would have hoped. Where are the difficult areas at the moment?
	In that first debate, I also highlighted the potential tension between the desire to give industry long-term planning stability and, at the same time, to meet the near-term operational demands. I happened to choose section B5 on helicopters as my example. As I pointed out then—nearly a year ago—we needed,
	"heavy-lift helicopter capacity for Iraq, Afghanistan, for UN operations, for conflict prevention and for humanitarian relief. We cannot provide it if we are putting all our money into attack and maritime helicopters in order to promote an industrial strategy. So what I see is that, even at this early stage, we are shaping the future of our operational requirements around an industrial strategy".—[Official Report, 15/12/05; col. 1413.]
	The Minister's response was to say:
	"We recognise that we must address that within our overall rotor-craft strategy and we are doing so. We are making the extra investment to enable us to do so".—[Official Report, 15/12/05; col. 1416.]
	Yet, as we know only too acutely, the near-term problem is still with us a year later. I do not ask the Minister to rehearse again all the urgent work that he is doing to get lift-helicopters for our current operations. It is the wider point that I hope he will address. How does he see a long-term strategy for stability for industry working when the strategic context is changing so rapidly, and often unpredictably?
	Of course, it is not just the security environment that is in a state of flux; there is also the question of the industrial environment. Indeed, the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, in the gap highlighted one aspect of that. BAE Systems is very much favoured by the strategy as a repository of national defence and aerospace capability, yet it is an international company. It now has as many employees in the United States as in the United Kingdom. This week, the Sunday Times was speculating, as the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, said, about the prospect of a takeover of BAE Systems at some stage by Boeing, and there is also the possibility of Rolls-Royce being taken over by an American company. I think that both are unlikely in the short term but they are not impossible scenarios in the medium term. I would be interested to hear how the Minister views his ability to factor in those uncertainties into a defence industrial strategy which has to project national capabilities into the long term.
	The noble Lord, Lord Levene, as always, with his great experience, made an important contribution to this debate. I remember his time at the Ministry of Defence, balancing how much we favour particular industries and what that means in terms of their ability to develop into efficient industries.
	On the implementation side, the Defence Select Committee identified some areas for further work, some of which have been mentioned already. I am sure that the Minister will update us on how they are progressing. The key area that has been mentioned is research and technology. It has seen a long-term decline in funding; something that everyone involved in this business has worried about.
	This afternoon, I was delighted to claim the only copy of the defence technology strategy available in the House of Lords. I went to the Library where I was told, "You will be careful with it, won't you? We have only one copy". I went to the Printed Paper Office where the staff said "That is very interesting: it has no command number, no reference number and no date, so we cannot order it". Actually, they said that they would try to order it from the Ministry of Defence. Obviously, we have not had time to absorb everything in this document but its status is a little uncertain. It is not a White Paper; and it is not a dated document from the Ministry of Defence. Is it a pamphlet giving us the thoughts of the Minister or is it government policy? How are the companies that will read this with great interest to take this document? Certainly those in the Printed Paper Office have not seen a document come out in such an anonymous format.
	Nevertheless, we have been asking for priorities in terms of research and the strategy gives us that. I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, for telling me what I did not know: that we have a figure for the funding of the R&T side, which is going to rise in line with inflation. In other words, it will not rise in real terms at all. The funding is too little; it has declined; and we have a problem because we are not investing anything like the amount invested in the United States. How does the Minister think, at that kind of funding level, he will close or stop the gap increasing in relation to United States technology? What thoughts are there for doing more with our European colleagues, in terms of pooling resources—each nation spending little packets of money and not achieving anything very much?
	The Defence Select Committee also looked at small and medium-sized enterprises. They are a vital part of the United Kingdom's defence industrial base, but they have great problems in getting their voices heard in the Ministry of Defence against the big companies. In my quick skim of the technology strategy document, I saw mention of how SMEs will be involved. But in terms of bidding for the main contracts and getting involved, what has the Minister managed to do this year to try to bring in the SMEs?
	The Select Committee also highlighted the further work required in the maritime sector. The noble Lord, Lord Truscott, also mentioned that. The press has suggested that the Minister has been applying pressure to speed up developments in this area. I hope that this evening he will share with us what progress he has made.
	Since we last debated the DIS, as the noble Lord, Lord Levene, and the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, highlighted, we have had the July announcement of the merger of the Defence Procurement Agency and the Defence Logistics Organisation. That is a massive amalgamation. I agree with the noble Lord and the noble Baroness that it is right and overdue. However, we have only just completed the creation of the DLO, where the savings that were assumed were rather slower in coming than had been planned for. I would be interested to hear whether the Minister is confident that the DLO is ready for this next big step change and what assumptions have been made about new savings. One of the problems is that one cannot get this done if the savings are forced too quickly.
	Everyone who looks at defence acquisition seems to agree that the key need is for cultural change. Does the Minister agree that that is fundamental and, if so, how does he think he is going to achieve it?
	As the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, highlighted, looking ahead, the most important issue is resources. At the moment, funds are needed for urgent operational needs. We hear of them every day: operational bonus payments, vehicles and helicopters. Yet funds are needed to make this strategy work. Is the Minister confident that he will get the funding to support his strategy?
	Then there is the balance of the equipment programme. I have avoided using tonight as an occasion to debate progress on particular procurement projects, but the noble Lord, Lord Jones, mentioned a number of them. They are important, but I want to focus on strategic issues for the future. As we look forward, we have the problem of a somewhat unbalanced programme, which now focuses on maritime issues—the carrier programme and the possible replacement of Trident—at a time when all our current operational needs are on the land warfare side. We are buying aircraft that do not have close air support capabilities, but that is what we need. Does the Minister agree that we are at a stage when his colleagues in the Ministry need to look at reviewing defence policy so that they can better inform his defence industrial strategy?

Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, on a number of occasions, I have suggested to the Minister that we should have a debate in government time on his important defence industrial strategy. Therefore, I am moderately pleased that he has prevailed upon the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, to pose the Question before us that will enable the Minister to give an account of progress. This debate is not exactly what we asked for, but it is better than nothing and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, for sponsoring it.
	I echo the noble Lord's praise of our Armed Forces and, as he said, they must have the equipment to ensure that they do their job properly. I also echo his point about the vital importance of safeguarding the nation's maritime capacity, but, unlike him, I did not have the luxury of sight of the defence technology strategy document before this debate. I echo the protestations made by the noble Lord, Lord Garden, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister the good reason why we did not get a chance to consider that very important document before this debate.
	The noble Lord, Lord Levene, who has great experience in the defence procurement and manufacturing industry, spoke with great eloquence, and I am looking forward to reading closely his speech in Hansard tomorrow. I also listened carefully to the important points made by the noble Lord, Lord Jones, about the world-class high-tech defence industry in Wales. Like him, I look forward to hearing the Minister's response on the future of the A400M and the future strategic tanker aircraft. The noble Baroness, Lady Dean, welcomed the hardnosed, commercial approach of the DIS. She is hoping for progress on the carrier project, as are we. I look forward to the Minister touching on that subject and also on the JSF and FRES. As the noble Baroness said, she chairs our defence group, and I would like to put on record how much I appreciate her outstanding leadership of that important group. My noble friend Lord Hamilton asked two interesting questions on BAE Systems, and I look forward to the Minister's response to them.
	I anticipate that the Minister's response generally will refer in some detail both to the McKane report, published by his department in June, and to the defence research report similarly published at the start of October.
	I hope, if with rather less confidence, that the noble Lord will also address The Defence Industrial Strategy: An Analysis of Industry Responses, collated and published by RUSI, and I quote:
	"An outcome of the Defence Research Report is the 'wish list' of technologies which the MoD is said, in Press Reports today, to wish to nurture".
	The most significant outcome of the McKane report is, of course, the proposal to amalgamate the roles of the Defence Procurement Agency and the Defence Logistics Organisation.
	We accept the case for big-ticket items such as tanks, ships and aircraft to be handled seamlessly through their operational life by one authority. Nevertheless, the creation of an enormous department dealing with everything from aircraft carriers down to simple items like mobile phones threatens to create a completely unwieldy operation.
	It is a superficially simple decision, but the scope for procedural difficulties, and indeed for obstruction, is almost unlimited. We are concerned that attention to the inevitable issues that will arise from this extensive reorganisation will serve to distract attention from the demanding work involved in bringing the core objectives of the DIS into effect—a concern of industry, as expressed in the RUSI report. It would be disastrous if MoD officials devote the next two years to a fixation with implementing this huge merger.
	The proof of success will lie in an acceleration of the procurement cycle to bring it more up to speed with the cycle of technological advance; a direct and effective communication and understanding between the Armed Forces, as users of the equipment, and industry, as the designers and suppliers—or, as the RUSI report which I have mentioned puts it:
	"Post-DIS the Front Line must be able to influence acquisition more directly".
	It will also lie in a shorter, quicker and more reliable supply chain and a significant reduction over time in the working capital tied up in the procurement and logistics processes and chain.
	There is much else that is interesting and welcome in and arising from the McKane report and the report on Maximising Benefits from Defence Research. But the very limited time available tonight does not allow me to dwell on them, or on the hundreds of technologies identified as meriting nurture, as I want to highlight some of the points in the third document, the RUSI analysis of industry responses, and to invite the Minister's response to them.
	I have already mentioned industry's reported concerns that the knock-on demands of the DPA/DLO merger should not divert attention from the basic objectives of the strategy, and that the avowed intention to bring industry and the front line together to mutual advantage should indeed be effected.
	This will involve very considerable culture changes by all concerned, the Armed Forces, industry and the MoD itself as the clearing house. Industry's current observation, as reported, is that,
	"commitment to the implementation of DIS is not reflected at all levels and across all organisations within MoD".
	Does the Minister accept that this is indeed the fact? If so, how is he and those working with him, rather than those who may not support his ideas, planning to change this?
	Industry also sounds a series of warning notes about many of the implications, direct and indirect, of "partnering" as described in the strategy. This is probably the point in the original DIS which causes the most difficulty to me and to my right honourable and honourable friends in the other place.
	As the report says, and we agree:
	"Long-term partnering with MoD should not be exclusive to a few companies".
	So far, the Minister has concluded agreements with Augusta Westland, in respect of helicopters, and MBDA, in respect of missiles. Perhaps the Minister can tell the House with what other companies he is in negotiation. The report continues—and again, we agree:
	"We must fully understand the purposes of different partnering and alliancing models, which may involve more than two actors".
	Of course, such is the case with the prototype allowance to take forward the Carrier project. The report continues:
	"The necessarily elaborate contractual arrangements may not be feasible".
	We believe that to be a valid cautionary note.
	In the same context, the report is concerned about the position of small and medium-sized enterprises—the SMEs mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Garden. Again, we share that concern. SMEs are widely and correctly seen as a source of innovation and a contributor to flexibility. Those are qualities that we want to cherish.
	The development of the DIS has a considerable way to go if it is to attract our support on that point. When the Minister presented his strategy to this House last December, I warmly congratulated him on producing the document to time and gave a cautious and qualified welcome to its content. In a similar sense, I congratulate him tonight on having sustained the momentum as he has. I am sure that he understands to a substantial extent—not completely—the problems that lie ahead of him and I look forward with interest to hearing what he has to say tonight. Although I cannot assure him of our wholehearted endorsement on every point, I can say that, in general terms, we are, and will show ourselves, broadly supportive of what he is trying to do.